


Ashes To Ashes Part One: This Means Nothing To Me

by Alice_Writes_Stuff



Series: Ashes To Ashes AU [2]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket, Ashes to Ashes (UK TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Alternate Universe- Crossover, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Is A Chef's Salad, F/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Police Procedural
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:20:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22996102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alice_Writes_Stuff/pseuds/Alice_Writes_Stuff
Summary: When Detective Inspector Kit Snicket set out to take her twelve-year-old daughter to school one day, the last thing she expected was to be caught up in a dangerous hostage situation that ends with her being shot.But things are about to get stranger, as Kit- who has been studying the confusing reports left behind by her twin brother Jacques for the last year- finds herself in the summer of 1981, surrounded by the same characters he claimed to have met while in a coma. Now she has to ask the same question he did- is this real, or a construction of her traumatised mind?Regardless, she's determined to fight- fight to live, fight to see her daughter, fight to get home.
Relationships: Beatrice Baudelaire & Kit Snicket, Beatrice Baudelaire/Bertrand Baudelaire, Bertrand Baudelaire & Georgina Orwell, Bertrand Baudelaire & Kit Snicket, Count Olaf/Kit Snicket, Kit Snicket & Georgina Orwell
Series: Ashes To Ashes AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706992
Comments: 11
Kudos: 9





	1. Prologue- In Which The Snickets Face A Vastly Frightening Danger

**A.N- This is gonna be a bit different from my other Snicketverse fics, in that it’s gonna be a lot darker. This chapter in particular includes threats of violence against a minor, and the main character being shot. If you worry that this is going to be a trigger, then skip the section starting with “Mum!” cried a voice, and ending with Kit brought them both back up the steps, for the threat of violence. The shooting comes right at the end of the chapter, in the very last paragraph.**

**I hope you guys enjoy this. Don’t forget to read, review and let me know what you think!**

Prologue- In Which The Snickets Face A Vastly Frightening Danger

_ London, 2008 _

“ _My name is Jacques Snicket. I had an accident and I woke up in 1973. Was I mad, in a coma or back in time? Whatever had happened, it was like I’d landed on a different planet. Now maybe if I could figure out the reason, I could get home._ ” Beatrice read aloud. “D’you think that really happened, though?” 

“Will you please put that back?” asked her mother, snatching the folder away and putting it into the back of the car where it belonged. 

“D’you think it happened, then?” she asked again. “D’you think Uncle Jacques really went back in time when he was in his coma?” 

“To tell you the truth, Bea, I really don’t know what I believe. That’s what I’ve been trying to work out.” She sighed, and paused at the traffic lights. “I’d rather not talk about this today, if that’s okay with you? It’s your birthday, I’d rather not spoil this.” Never mind that Jacques’ death would already be enough to spoil the occasion, but that seemed beside the point. 

They drove in silence for a little longer, before Kit spoke again. “Did Rachel get you anything for your birthday, Bea?”

“Yeah- she got me a Blackberry.” Kit smiled.

“I see- maybe I’ll get you some more while you’re at school, you can have a birthday crumble!” Beatrice laughed- good, she wasn’t getting too old to find the humour in jokes like that. “What about your dad? Have you heard from him yet?” 

“No,” Bea admitted. “He’s still in Canada.” 

Kit sighed- she’d hoped that today of all days, Dewey would make a bit more effort, at least for their daughter’s sake. Oh well, the day was young. Maybe he’d get in touch later. Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice on her work radio. 

“DI Snicket, are you there?” 

“Yes, I’m here, what is it?”

“South Bank, outside Tate Modern. Gunman has taken a female hostage- it’s looking urgent.”

“Great, that’s all we need. Bea, pass me the-” 

“I’ll do it!” Beatrice offered, grabbing the flashing light and reaching her arm out the open window, so she could put it up on the roof. 

“Now, hang on!” Kit instructed, as they sped through the streets of London towards the Tate Modern Gallery. 

When they pulled up at South Bank, Kit climbed out, shutting the door firmly behind her. 

“Now, you stay put, dear- I’ll be right back.” Before Beatrice could protest, she walked away. “Talk to me,” she said, to the first uniformed officer she saw.

“His name’s Gregor Anwhistle, he’s taken one hostage. He might be on drugs, it’s hard to say. He seems incredibly volatile, he could do anything.” 

“Look, I can’t take this one, I’m sorry- I’m taking my daughter to school. It’s her twelfth birthday, she’s in the car with me right now, you can’t seriously expect me to-” 

“He asked for you by name, ma’am,” the officer cut in. 

“What?”

“He said he’ll shoot her if you won’t speak to him.” 

“Okay,” Kit replied, already starting to walk towards the scene. “Where’s armed response?”

“They’re on their way.” 

Kit nodded, and pushed her way through the crowd, leaving a trail of “Excuse mes” and “Let me throughs” in her wake. Finally, she lifted the crime scene tape, and stepped under it, bringing herself face to face with Anwhistle. 

“You asked to see me, Mr. Anwhistle? My name’s DI Kit Snicket,” she said, holding up her warrant card so he could see.

“I know who you are. Now, will you stop staring at me? I don’t like being stared at!”

“Okay, I’ll avert my eyes,” Kit replied, looking down at the ground. “And if you let this young lady go, then we can discuss-” 

“What? What can we discuss? I’ll kill her- and you’ll be next!” He paused, and Kit tried to figure out what to do, how best to handle this. “You get over here, now!” he yelled, and taking a deep breath, she obeyed.

“Listen, Gregor, I help people, it’s my job- I help people who are trapped. Let me help you, too.” Her eyes flicked up to look at him- bad move.

“I told you to _stop staring at me!_ ” he yelled. “See, this is my show, I make the rules.” He paused again. “I knew you when you were little, did you know that? You’ve got your mother’s eyes, Kit.” 

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m happy, hope you’re happy too!” he sang, which just made her feel more confused. “I’m happy, hope you’re happy too!” And then he pointed his gun straight at Kit. “Boom!” he yelled.

“Mum!” cried a voice. Out of the corner of her eye, Kit saw a flash of red hat, then Beatrice was between her mother and a dangerous man with a gun. 

“Beatrice, what are you _doing?!”_ Kit yelled. To the armed response units who’d arrived, she yelled, “Don’t shoot! Hold your fire! Don’t shoot, please!” 

As soon as it was clear nobody was going to shoot Beatrice by mistake, Kit turned to face her, needing to tell her to get out of there and go home- only to find she wasn’t there. 

“Mum!” Beatrice yelled. Kit whipped around, to see that Anwhistle had gotten hold of her daughter. 

“Beatrice!” 

“Don’t come any closer!” Anwhistle warned, leading Beatrice down the nearby steps. “You get down those steps right now!” Beatrice obeyed. Kit took a step towards her, but before she could go any further, Anwhistle looked over his shoulder and addressed her. “Don’t you dare follow us, or I’ll blow her head off!” 

Kit stayed where she was, her hands clenching into fists. What was she going to do? She couldn’t lose Beatrice, not after everything, she _couldn’t lose her,_ she- Her panicked thoughts were cut off by a gun shot. 

_“Beatrice!”_ she screamed, tearing down the steps so fast she almost fell. _“Beatrice!”_ Finally, she reached the bottom, where she found her daughter, missing her red beret but otherwise unharmed. 

“Mum!” she cried, running to hug her. Kit hugged her right back, relieved that they’d both made it out of this mess alive. 

Kit brought them both back up the steps, and away from the crowds that were starting to gather outside the gallery. 

“I think it’s best if your godmother takes you home now, Beatrice. I’ve gotta get to work, I have a stack of reports to-” she stopped herself, realising that this wasn’t what her daughter wanted to hear. “Oh, Bea, come here,” she said, pulling her close.

“D’you know how scary that was? We could’ve _died!”_

“I know, that’s exactly why I told you to stay in the car! Now look, it’s a hard, screwed up world, but if you trust me, I can try and get you through it, alright?” Beatrice nodded. 

It was a relief to both of them when they saw Rachel Scieszka, Beatrice’s godmother and a long-time Snicket family friend. Bea ran up to hug her. 

“It’s alright now, little bat,” Rachel told her. “Why don’t we get you the most chocolaty cake we can find, then you can show me that new video you were telling me about, on the YouTube.” 

“It’s just YouTube!” Bea replied, smiling. Together, she and Rachel started to walk away.

“Beatrice!” Kit called, blowing her a kiss. “We’ll blow the candles out together, alright?” Her daughter nodded, and Kit walked back to where she’d left her car, climbing in. 

As she switched on the car, she remembered the song Gregor Anwhistle had been singing. 

“I’m happy, hope you’re happy too,” she muttered, absently. Then, she turned to check if there was anyone behind her before she pulled away from her spot. 

She screamed when she saw that Gregor Anwhistle was in the back seat, still holding his gun.

“Calm down, Kit. Just drive.” She had no choice but to obey.

He made her drive down to the river, and park beside a boat. Then he got out, and yanked her door open. 

“Come on,” he said, and Kit unbuckled her seatbelt and hot out of the car. He grabbed her by the arm and started shoving her down the gangplank- she had to move quickly to avoid falling over.

“How do you know me?” she asked. “What do you want?” 

“Stop talking!” he snapped. “You listen to me, Kit Snicket. You’re gonna be my ticket out of this mess, d’you understand?” She nodded, and kept walking. “It’s me,” Anwhistle said, and Kit realised he was talking to someone on his phone. “You’ll have to listen to me now- I’ve got a piece of your past standing right here in front of me, the daughter of Jacob and Evelyn Snicket.” 

“How did you know my parents?” Kit asked, before she could think better of it. 

“Not just that,” Anwhistle continued, like she hadn’t spoken. “I’m gonna tell her the truth, about exactly _why_ her parents died.” 

By now, they’d reached the end of the gangplank, and Kit was frozen, too stunned to move forward. Anwhistle gave her a hard push, and this time, she did fall, landing on the slimy bottom of the long-abandoned boat and getting mud all over her black coat. 

She stumbled to her feet, before moving to a less disgusting part of the boat and taking a seat. She tucked a lock of dark hair, escaped from her neat bun, behind her ear and tried to think. _Don’t look like you’re going to attack or run,_ she told herself. _Maybe you can still diffuse this, and get back to Beatrice alive._ Anwhistle sighed, and chucked his phone to the floor. Bad sign. 

“What do my parents have to do with any of this?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm. “They’ve been dead for a long time now.” 

“I had an empire,” he said, again like she hadn’t spoken. “Back in the day, I had it all. I had connections, I had dealers on every street corner. People _respected me.”_

“And things went wrong,” Kit replied, sensing a possible way out. If she could help Anwhistle work through whatever this was, maybe she could get out of here alive. “Do you want to talk about that?” She tried to smile, to stay calm. He was still holding the gun, but she tried to ignore it. “I understand that you feel trapped, I really, really do, and I want to help you. Those officers were itching for a fatality outcome, but-” 

Then there was a blast, a sound of a gun being fired. And then there was nothing.


	2. Chapter One: In Which Kit Gets A New Job

**A.N- With this chapter, we begin the fic properly. I have a couple of warnings, for the use of a derogatory term for a sex worker (not an extreme one, but I thought you guys should be aware) just after the bright red car shows up, and a brief mention of a suicide attempt, just after the main characters pull up outside the police station. That’s all in this chapter. Don’t forget to read and review, and let me know what you think!**

Chapter One: In Which Kit Gets A New Job

Kit

There was nothing, and then there wasn’t. There was blackness, and then there was light and colour. There was silence, and then there was music.

Kit opened her eyes, and looked around. She shouldn’t be able to do that, should she? Not after she’d just been shot, at any rate. And yet here she was, somehow alright, despite the bullet she’d just taken to the head- the bullet she could still see, plain as day, if she closed her eyes. 

She sat up groggily, trying to take in her surroundings. She was still on a boat, but other than that, everything else had changed. The boat was clean now, and brightly lit. There was music coming from somewhere, and there were so many people, none of them Anwhistle. They were all looking at her strangely, though she couldn’t understand why. She didn’t understand any of this- all she understood was that she had to get out of here, had to get to the bottom of this. 

Finally, she managed to push her way out of the crowds, and onto the gangplank- which was now bright white, no longer grimy and rusty like it had been earlier. To her surprise, a line of police officers in old-fashioned uniforms came running towards her. 

“Help me!” she shouted, trying to grab their attention. “Please, you’ve got to help me, I’ve been shot!” 

“You look alright to me, miss,” remarked one of the officers, before continuing on his way.

Kit frowned, and tried to run up the gangplank, away from the confusing boat. It was made a bit harder, though, by the fact that she was wearing high heels- something she hadn’t fully realised until she’d started running. 

Eventually, she reached a clear puddle in front of an abandoned building, and she got a chance to see her reflection. It did very little to clear things up- if anything, it only made her more confused. 

Her hair had changed- a mass of curls in place of her tidy bun. The sensible black coat and dark blue jeans she’d been wearing were gone too, replaced with a truly ridiculous outfit- an indecently short dress, a big white fur coat and black stockings. And, of course, there were the heels. Bright red, of course, her very own ruby slippers. 

“I don’t think I’m in Kansas any more,” she muttered. Then, someone grabbed her arm. 

“There you are!” A man’s voice. “You called the police, didn’t you? This is all your fault!” Kit didn’t have the faintest idea what he was on about, but decided it was probably best not to mention that. 

Before she could protest her innocence, though, a bright red car sped towards them, coming to a screeching halt a few feet away. Three people climbed out, two men and one woman. There was something familiar about them, but Kit couldn’t put her finger on it. 

The woman was older than Kit. Her brown hair was pinned up even more tightly than Kit’s had been this morning, and she had a pair of glasses sitting firmly on her nose. She wore a brown leather jacket, a dark green jumper and black jeans, and she was holding a gun. So was the younger of the two men, a nervous-looking guy with messy dark hair and glasses. His leather jacket was black, and his jeans were white.

It wasn’t until she saw the other man, though, that she started to realise _why_ the trio looked so familiar. He may be dressed differently from the way Jacques had described him- in a long black coat instead of a brown one, and a pair of snakeskin boots- but the single thick eyebrow was the same. 

“Today, my friend, your diary entry will read: Took a prozzie hostage, and was shot by three armed bastards.”

“Let’s try and be reasonable about this,” Kit said, thinking out loud. “We need to be smart, to not let this get out of control.”

“She does have a point,” the woman said. “He could have a gun.” 

“Yeah,” replied the man in the black coat. “You’ll wanna be careful there, don’t upset him.”

“If you choose a path of destruction, driven by illogical pride and delusional self importance,” Kit told her captor, “you’ll enjoy only a fleeting sense of power before being, well, being shot and killed.” The woman and the younger man exchanged a look. “These officers are hoping for a fatality outcome- don’t do anything to justify that.”

“That is a good point,” the man replied, releasing her and stepping away. Kit hadn’t gotten a proper look at him before, but now she could see that he had dark hair and a thin moustache and a blue pinstripe suit. “It’s alright, officers- I’m completely unarmed, there’s no need to shoot me!” 

“You’re still gonna go down for this!” said the younger man.

“I wouldn’t be so sure- I’m sure nothing will come of this, will it, Mr. Dupin?”

“Dupin?” Kit asked, as the pieces finally started to fall into place.

“Don’t count on it. Right, Georgie, get this twat in the car. Bert, you look after the lady.” Kit blinked. 

“DC Bertrand Markson?” she asked the younger man, who nodded. “Then that’s...” she looked at the woman, who was slamming Kit’s captor against the car door. “DC Georgina Orwell… and Olaf Dupin.” 

As she looked from officer to officer, she struggled to take it all in- and promptly passed out.

* * *

When she came to, she was sitting in the back of what she assumed was the bright red car. Orwell opened the door, pulling the seat forward so she could stumble out. 

“Okay,” she said, looking around. They were parked outside a huge police station, crowds of people spilling out from the various other cars also parked there. “Okay, I just need to stay calm. This is just a subconscious construct, induced by a severe cranial trauma.”

“We’re gonna need you to give us a statement about what happened,” Dupin told her, though she was scarcely listening.

“It’s incredible,” she breathed. “I can hear the wind in the trees!”

“Please don’t burst into song,” Dupin muttered.

“No,” she said, realising that this whole thing felt far more real than it should- just the way Jacques had always described it. “No, this is what happened to Jacques, isn’t it? It can’t be happening to me, it just _can’t.”_

“You alright there?” Orwell called, but Kit ignored her. Instead, she looked out onto the road. 

“I’ve gotta get back, back to Beatrice,” she said, taking a step forward, onto the street. If she could just… maybe it would bring her back, if she could take a definitive step-

“What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” Dupin snapped, grabbing her arm. “Do you know what the paperwork’s like for suicides?” 

“Let me go,” she said, trying to yank her arm free. He sighed and scooped her up, carrying her into the station. “No, no, don’t take me in there!” It was too late, though, she was already inside. 

Fortunately, once she had been brought inside, Dupin set her down. She followed him into the incident room- a large, brightly lit space, albeit cluttered with desks and filing cabinets. Kit looked around, unable to shake the feeling of waking up in another world.

At one end of the room was a door, the words “DCI Olaf Dupin” written on the window, which led to a small office. It was to this door that Kit walked, still half in a daze. Instead, she found a desk, with a big, bulky computer sitting on it. Taking a seat on the desk chair, she switched it on.

“It’s July 1981,” she breathed, reading the bright green words on the screen. “It’s the year my parents died.”

“You know, when I said you were supposed to come in and give a statement, I didn’t mean you were supposed to come in _here,”_ Dupin remarked. 

“Haven’t you got anything on here besides the time and date?” she asked. 

“I have Pong,” he said, almost defensively. Just then, a young policewoman with short black hair entered the tiny office. 

“Guv, I- Hey, are you alright?” she asked Kit, handing her the can of fizzy juice she’d been carrying. “Here you go.”

“Is that all you’ve got, Baudelaire?” Dupin asked. “She’ll want something classier than that- a drop of Bolly should do the trick. You get back to your desk. And you,” he said, turning to Kit, “you had better start making sense, cause this is really starting to get on my nerves.” As he said that, the phone rang. 

“Okay, I know this bit,” Kit said, getting to her feet and walking to the ringing phone. “I suspected this would happen- that my mind would start making up conduits and links to the real world.” She picked up the phone. “Hello, is anyone there? Can you talk to me, tell me what’s going on? Is my daughter okay, can you tell me that?” Silence on the other end. 

“I told you to start making sense,” Dupin snapped at her. “We’re the ones who should be asking you what’s going on- can you tell us that?”

Kit didn’t answer- she’d spotted the nameplate on the desk Dupin was standing beside. _DI Kit Snicket_ , it read in clear, unmistakeable letters. 

“That’s not possible,” she whispered. Instinctively, she reached into her white coat, finding an inside pocket she hadn’t noticed before. And inside that pocket, she found a warrant card, which she showed to Dupin, her hands shaking. 

“Okay then. As you all know, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been waiting on a new DI- Kit Snicket.”

“Another Snicket, yes, we know,” Orwell said. “Why, is she here, or-” She paused, seeing Kit with her warrant card. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

“What she means is, welcome on board, Inspector.”

* * *

Kit was in the kitchen area, flicking through the channels and getting increasingly frustrated. Jacques had told her about what the phones and the TVs had been like when he’d been in his coma, how he’d heard things, voices of doctors and nurses and visitors at the hospital his body had been in, while in his subconscious, he raced around the streets of Manchester solving crimes and saving lives. Why wasn’t the same thing happening to her? She’d assumed that both coma worlds would work the same, especially because they seemed to share common characters. 

“D’you wanna tell me what you were doing in that brothel?” Dupin asked, startling her. “Were you undercover?” Kit nodded, thinking it was as good an explanation as any. She flicked to the news, to a report about violence in multi-racial areas. 

“The public hate you,” she observed.

“They hate _us,_ ” he corrected. “Right, I need a cup of tea. D’you want one?” She nodded again. 

“Good idea- in fact, why don’t you just run along, _Olaf?”_ she asked, surrounding his name with air quotes. “You just run along and do whatever it is subconscious recessional forms do.” 

“Did you just _wiggle your fingers_ when you said my name?”

Kit decided not to dignify that with a response. Instead, she grabbed a dark blue suit jacket that had been left on a hook, and changed out of her white coat and into it. Then she twisted her hair up into a bun and shoved a couple of pencils in there to hold it in place. It wasn’t much, but it at least went some way to making her feel more like herself.

“Jacques told me that the telly would talk to him sometimes,” she said, more to herself than to him.

“Jacques? Jacques Snicket?”

“Yeah, he was my brother.”

“I thought so- you look like him. Course, I didn’t realise at first, but now I’m seeing it.” He paused. “Listen, if I’d known you were Jacques’ sister, I wouldn’t have been so hard on you earlier. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kit replied. “How long have you been down here, anyway?” Kit asked, really wanting to change the subject. She really didn’t want to talk about Jacques right now- it was bad enough that she had somehow assimilated his fantasies. 

“We’ve been down here for about a year, me, Georgie and Bert. Not that it matters- crime is crime, and scum is scum. Doesn’t matter if it’s away up in Shetland or away down in Cornwall.”

“And what about me?” she wondered. “Why am I here?”

“Don’t look at me- you’re the one who put in for it.”

* * *

Dupin brought them to the cells, after Kit told him that she wanted to get stuck right in- which was true, the busier she was, the less she’d be able to think about all the worries churning in her head. Better to deal with those later- or never.

“So, the twit in the cell is Jerome Mills. Typical banking twat by day, brothel-running drug dealer by night. Me and Georgie are doing the interview, but you can sit in, if you want.”

“You must be quite proud of yourself,” Dupin said to Mills. Kit studied the man across from her new co-workers, watching the way he was behaving. “Taking innocent, working-class kids and getting them into a life of addiction and crime.” 

“Well, to be quite frank, Mr. Dupin, you can’t actually prove any of that. And not only that, according to the lady in red over there, you were deliberately looking for a- what did she call it? A fatality outcome, by which she meant killing me, I’d assume? Ipso facto, my case rests.” 

“That’s a load of rubbish!” Orwell protested. “And I’m pretty sure that last part was in Klingon.” She glared at Mills. “Listen, if we _really_ wanted to kill you, we wouldn’t have been so bloody-”

“Please excuse my sergeant, Mills. She’s under a lot of stress at the moment, her mother’s in the hospital.” Sergeant? That was something that had changed between her version of this place and Jacques’ version. 

“Yeah, I… God, I hope she gets better.”

Kit frowned, no longer paying full attention to the interrogation. An idea had occurred to her. If the TV and the phone hadn’t worked, maybe she had to aim a little higher.

“Where do you keep the most advanced radio in this station?” she asked. 

“Ask Bert,” Orwell told her. “I doubt he has anything better to do at the moment, he can show you.”

She found Bert in the kitchen area, drinking tea along with WPC Baudelaire.

“Can I ask you a favour, DC Markson?”

“Sure- and you can just call me Bert, everyone else does. Well, apart from the guv, he sometimes calls me Bertrand.”

“Right. Well, anyway, could you tell me where the most advanced radio in this station is kept?”

It turned out that the station’s “most advanced radio” wasn’t up to much, at least not by Kit’s modern standards. Still, Bert seemed impressed by it.

“It’s like tomorrow’s world today, isn’t it, boss? Er, I mean, ma’am,” he corrected himself.

“It’s alright, I suppose,” Kit replied. “So long as it helps me make a connection, though, find out what’s going on out in the world, I don’t mind. I’m unconscious, and I need to be revived.”

“Yeah,” Bert said, adjusting his glasses and frowning. “That sounds like most of my weekends.” 

Bertrand

“Hey, Bea,” Bert said, catching up to his girlfriend as she was coming out of the kitchen. “I pinched this off Mills, d’you want it?” he asked, holding out the Sony Walkman that had been confiscated earlier.

“Thanks!” she replied, taking it. “I’ve been wanting to get one of these!”

“Isn’t that mine?” Mills asked, emerging from the interrogation room along with Georgina.

“No, I think you’ve got it mistaken, sir,” Bert told him. 

“Oh, well,” Mills replied, then turned to the guv, who had also just exited the interrogation room. “You know, Dupin, this is what my job actually is- looking for good investments, exciting new products, and giving them the boost they need. It’s all about the future- and you know something? I don’t think you’ve got any place in that future.” And with that, he was away.

“What d’you think of our new DI, then?” Bert asked, once Mills and the guv were gone. 

“I don’t know,” Georgina replied. “She botched that arrest, with all that fatality outcome nonsense. And she’s been acting like she had a screw loose since we picked her up.”

“She reminds you of Jacques- he did all that stuff, too. Not the fatality outcome bit, but the other stuff.”

“Yeah. It’s weird- I knew he had siblings, and I knew one of them was a twin sister. But I don’t think I realised that we’d met her until it was spelled out, you know?” Bert nodded. 

“What about you, Bea? What do you think?” he asked.

“I don’t know- I never met Jacques, you know, so I can’t rightly compare them. And it seems a bit early to judge what Kit herself is like, although she does seem a bit weird.”

Kit

Kit groaned in frustration, feeling about ready to throw one of her stupid red heels at the unresponsive radio. Clearly, seeking something more advanced hadn’t worked. She was ready to give up and leave the room, when the door opened and Dupin came in. 

“What’s so special about you, _Olaf?”_ she asked, once again surrounding his name with air quotes. “Why do you show up when good cops go under?”

“It’s my aftershave,” he replied, bluntly. “And will you stop doing the finger thing?” Rather than reply, Kit flipped him off. “Charming. Now, we have the makings of a drug epidemic in this city, and thanks to you, we’ve just lost our chief supplier.”

“You don’t seriously think _Mills_ is your kingpin? Even a basic psyche assessment would prove he doesn’t possess any delegational inclinations.”

“He doesn’t possess any _what?_ ” 

“Never mind. Listen, the point is, top-flight crime lords expect their minions to do all the heavy lifting. They only expend their energy when they have to. They _don’t_ gloat in police stations, _Olaf.”_ She sighed. “They don’t fork out for an expensive lawyer, and then don’t let him get a word in edgeways. And they are certainly not trying to impress blockheaded northerners like you.” Dupin was silent for a while, before responding. 

“Was that supposed to impress me? Because it didn’t work.”

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “This is absolutely ridiculous! I’ve been trained to study the criminal mind- I’ve been working towards it my entire working life. Now here I am, stuck in my own head, with you. This is just great!”

“Listen, I know you’re going through a lot, but there’s no need for-”

“You don’t know anything! But hey, neither do I!” All I know is that I really didn’t expect this place to feel so real, you know? Even after everything Jacques said. I just didn’t think...” She reached out for his hand, and, surprisingly, he let her. “Look at that,” she breathed. “You feel so _real.”_

“Glad we got that cleared up!” he replied, grabbing her other hand and tugging her a little closer. “Now then, Bolly, are you gonna kiss me, or punch me?” 

Kit shook her head, pulled her hands free, and walked away. In all honesty, she could’ve probably done both of those things, but neither seemed wise. Just before she left the room, though, she spied a tape with a familiar name on it: Gregor Anwhistle.

Kit brought the tape through to the kitchen and popped it into the cassette player below the TV. She was disappointed to see that there was nothing of interest on the tape, but still curious as to why it was there. 

“Gregor Anwhistle is not somebody we need to be concerned with,” Dupin said, firmly. “He only has a minor record, and he keeps his eyes open for us. Other than that, we leave him alone.”

“I don’t know- he has to have a vital part in all this. Otherwise, why would he be in here?”

* * *

There was nothing for it- she’d need to try and work this out, get to the bottom of what was going on. Recruiting Markson and Baudelaire and clearing one of the white boards, she got to work. 

“Okay, let’s see if we can break this down. So, I was shot, and as a result of that act, I arrived in this… dystopia.” She then wrote the word dystopia on the board.

“I think I had dystopia once,” Markson commented. “I couldn’t eat solids for a week.” Kit ignored him and continued.

“My mind has created a dark and twisted place to send me, and since my brain is in severe trauma I can assume that it wouldn’t bother creating people I don’t need. That means everything is significant here.” She paused to write those words on the board, below dystopia. “Now, I’m an empirical person. I study everything, once I’ve broken it down. That is how I solve problems.”

“So, do you think your head has made up a puzzle for you to solve?” Baudelaire asked. Neither of them believed her, Kit could tell that. But she was too fired up to stop now. 

“Exactly. That will allow me to get strong. So, I must constantly analyse.” Again, she wrote that last word on the board.

“Wait, wait, analyse what? Why you were shot?” asked Markson.

“Indeed. When it happened, I remember seeing the bullet. I saw it coming, and I thought, _This is it, Kit. This is how it ends.”_

“So it’s like it was your destiny?” Baudelaire suggested. Kit grinned, and wrote the word Destiny on the board.

“Now, where does that leave me?” she asked, and turned back to the board.

Her smile faded as she studied it. The words she had written had been intended as a list, but they instead formed a bizarre sort of acrostic poem, the first letters of each line spelling out one word: “D-E-A-D.” Kit blinked, unable to process what she was seeing.

“No,” she breathed. “No, I’m not dead, I’m not dead, I’m not-” She trailed off, the board starting to blur and swim before her eyes. And then everything went black. 


	3. Chapter Two: In Which The Squad Do Not Work In Harmony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lorry, or Lorenzo, is this AU's version of Larry Your-Waiter.

Chapter Two: In Which The Squad Do Not Work In Harmony

Kit

When Kit awoke the next morning, at first she wasn’t sure where she was. She was on a bed, on top of a red duvet, a red blanket thrown on top of her. Someone had taken off her heels and removed the pens from her hair, but other than that her outfit remained intact.

Sitting up, she looked around the room. Her shoes were next to the wardrobe, a pair of ankle boots sitting beside them. The room itself was small and neat, containing no furniture save the bed, the wardrobe and a beside table, which had a note on it.

_Top floor of Lorenzo’s restaurant. Station is across the street. Don’t sleep in. -G_

Kit sighed and set the note down. She got out of bed, and went over to the wardrobe. There wasn’t anything in there that was suitable, so she settled for putting on a light blue button-down shirt over her dress, and the jacket on top of that. Then she pulled on the boots, put her hair back up with the pens and left the room.

Kit peered into the restaurant downstairs, and, after seeing that it was empty, quickly walked across the street to the station. Sitting at the front desk was a uniformed officer she hadn’t seen yesterday, a man with light brown skin and sleeves that covered his hands, and were probably a little longer than regulation.

“Morning, ma’am,” he said.

“Morning, um...” she trailed off, not knowing his name.

“Sergeant Fernald Widdershins,” he replied, holding out his hand. Except, it wasn’t technically a hand, it was a double-hooked prosthetic. Kit shook it anyway, to be polite. “Most people wouldn’t do that,” he said, as Kit signed herself in. “Thanks.”

“It’s no trouble,” she said, before walking along to the incident room.

“Morning, ma’am!” Bert said, once she came in. WPC Baudelaire was standing beside him, applying at least half a can of hairspray to her short hair. “Did you like the flat? Lorry lets us use it!” Kit nodded, before turning her attention to Baudelaire.

“WPC Baudelaire,” she said, coughing a little thanks to the overwhelming hairspray.

“You can call me Bea,” she said. “Or Beattie,” she added.

“Bea?” Kit asked, frowning at the younger woman.

“Yeah- I mean, it’s short for Beatrice, but nobody actually calls me that.”

“That’s… that’s my daughter’s name.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter!” Bea replied. “How old is she?”

“She was twelve yesterday.” Was it yesterday? She wasn’t sure how time actually worked here in relation to the real world. “Um, Bea, could I ask you a favour?” She nodded. “Could you get me a change of clothes, please? I would like to be out of red before Chris de Burgh starts writing songs about me.” It had been meant as a joke, but judging by their reactions, it had fallen a little flat. “Right. Bert, could you get me all the intelligence we have on Gregor Anwhistle? Addresses, contacts, past offences?”

“Sure,” he replied. Just then, Dupin came over from where he’d been examining something on Georgie’s desk.

“I know what you’re trying to do.”

“So do I- I believe the technical term is _my job.”_

“No need to get smart with me- I’ve seen all this before. A new broom swings in-”

“Sweeps in,” Kit corrected.

“Comes in,” he continued, “looking to make a quick arrest, hoping to impress the troops.”

“I know he doesn’t seem that impressive, but I’m telling you, Anwhistle is behind this. He has to be, because that is why I’m here.” Dupin sighed.

“Come here, I wanna show you something.” He brought her over to Georgie’s desk, which had a map of the Whitechapel area of London spread across it. It was covered in pins and lines, which formed a sort of spiderweb. “See, we’ve monitored the drugs traffic across this division. Movements, deals, all of it. The centre is here, the financial district. Now, Mills is a proper banker, he’ll know how to hide the drug money in any number of accounts.”

“We’re on the verge of a major bust,” Georgie added. “Possibly the biggest one this department has ever seen!” At that moment, Bert came up to them, and handed Kit a file.

“Here you are, boss, er, ma’am. Everything we’ve got on Gregor Anwhistle, including his business in Shadwell, and his past convictions for fencing stolen gear.”

“Look at your map, Dupin,” she said. “It’s a web. But the thing is, the spider isn’t sitting in the middle. He’s hiding on the edge.” She pointed to Shadwell, drawing a faint circle around it with a pencil.

* * *

There was only one solution- one way to prove that she was right and Olaf was wrong. She had to go right to the source of Anwhistle’s business, if she wanted any chance of exposing him. So, with Bertrand accompanying her, she set out to do just that.

“The guv’s right,” Bert said. “Anwhistle’s just a run-of-the-mill bloke trying to make ends meet.”

“No. He’ll become that one day, but for now he’s dangerous.”

“Look, the guv thinks you’re trying to undermine us, this is just proving him right.”

“Listen, _Bert,”_ she said. “I know how all this works, okay? Dupin’s the bullish one, Georgie’s the repressed one, and you’re the nervous one. I don’t care- I am still going to stop Gregor Anwhistle, because that could be exactly what I need to do to get me out of here.”

“Okay,” he said, once she was finished. “I’m… I’m not nervous, by the way, I’m just cautious.” With that cleared up, they continued to walk into the junk shop, where Anwhistle was rearranging a pile of buckets.

“Hello,” he said, when he spotted them.

“Mr. Anwhistle, it’s the police,” Bert responded, showing his warrant card.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asked. Kit could scarcely look at him- when she did, she saw her daughter’s terrified face, her red beret muddy and abandoned, the bullet coming right for her…

“You’re under arrest!” she blurted out, before she could think better of it, before she could think of a better way to approach this.

“What for?” Anwhistle asked, confused. “I bought all this legally, and I can prove it.”

“I know what you’re up to, Anwhistle. I know exactly what game you’re playing, and I will put a stop to it!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Bert, cuff him!” she snapped. _This might work,_ Kit thought, as Bert did as she asked. _If Anwhistle goes down, if I can prove that I’m right about him being the kingpin, then there’s a chance he could still be in jail in 2008, meaning he can’t shoot me, and-_

“Boss, er, ma’am, let’s go,” Bert said, interrupting her thoughts.

Kit nodded, and they left the junk shop- though just before she left, Kit spied a small black book on a stack of boxes. Inside, she found a lot of numbers and dates. She tucked it into her jacket pocket, to have a proper look at later.

* * *

Dupin wasn’t too impressed when they returned with Anwhistle, but nevertheless, he agreed to do one interview with Kit, presumably in the hopes that she would let this matter drop afterwards.

“You are responsible for an empire of drug dealers and money launderers, including Jerome Mills, aren’t you?” Kit asked. Anwhistle frowned at her, confused.

“No, no, I just run a junk shop, that’s all.”

“You are under arrest, and you are staying here.”

“While I may wish it were that simple, we’re gonna need something that’ll stick in court. Somehow I don’t think saying _you’re staying here_ will cut it.” Dupin turned to Anwhistle. “Mr. Anwhistle, do you have an appointed lawyer?”

“No, I’ll need to get one.”

“Yes, that makes sense- the strategy of a powerful man, letting others handle things for you.”

“Powerful men tend to bring their lawyers in with them, in my experience,” Dupin countered. Before Kit or Anwhistle could reply, the door opened, and Georgie poked her head round it.

“Guv, we’ve had a breakthrough!”

“Brilliant! In that case, you can go, Anwhistle- sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dupin,” he said, and left the room.

“Right, Georgie, what’ve you got?” Georgie came in carrying a bundle of papers.

“So, we put the crime squad onto Mills like you asked, and it turns out he made nine separate phone calls from phone boxes in the City district. He used phone cards for all of them.”

“Phone cards?” Dupin exclaimed. “Flashy git.”

“After that, he went and picked up a message from the railway arches near Tower Bridge. Something must’ve gotten him rattled.

“I know what got him rattled,” Kit said. “We pulled his boss in. He must’ve been checking to see if he could close the supply line down.”

They walked back to the incident room, where everyone was busy working. Bea was absent, but everyone else was present and accounted for.

“Anwhistle is a control freak,” Kit explained, trying once again to convince Dupin that she was right. “He needs to be in the driver’s seat, it’s essential to his emotional well-being.”

“Where do you even learn about all this hippy shit?” Dupin asked.

“Langley,” she replied.

“Near Macclesfield?” asked Bert. Kit shook her head.

“Virginia, actually, during a secondment to the CIA.”

“Ooh!” several detectives replied, mockingly. Kit flipped all of them off with both hands. Bea came in at that point, carrying a cardboard box.

“Here you go, ma’am, fresh clothes like you wanted.”

“Thanks, Bea,” Kit replied.

“I got them off a woman who was killed by a delivery van.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant!” She decided to have a look at them later, after she’d pitched her newest idea. “Let’s bring Mills in again. We need to shake the web, Anwhistle will hate that.”

“Psychiatry?” Dupin asked.

“Psychology,” Kit corrected.

“Same thing. Still, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” He looked down at the watch. “Boys and girls, it is precisely twelve of the clock. By 12:30, I want Mills and all his suspected accomplices in custody. Mush!”

* * *

To say that Jerome Mills did not look pleased to be back in custody again was something of an understatement. He seemed barely able to contain his anger and frustration at this situation.

“That’s the second time I’ve been arrested in as many days! I’ve almost certainly lost my job at the bank now.”

“Well, isn’t that terrible?” Dupin said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Still, you’re a smart boy, I’m sure you’ll get another job- and I’ll see that you get arrested there too. You’ll be unemployable, Mills.”

“Right then,” Mills said, adjusting the cuffs on his pinstripe suit jacket. “Time to talk turkey.” Dupin opened the interview room door with a flourish, gesturing for Mills to enter.

“Gobble away!”

“Oh, that’s very good, Mr. Dupin,” he replied. Kit and Georgie went to follow the two men into the room, but Mills shook his head. “No, no, no, Mr. Dupin. Just you.”

Kit and Georgie took a seat outside the interview room, waiting for Dupin and Mills to finish.

“You seem much less spacey than you were yesterday,” Georgie observed after a minute or two. “You’re reminding me of what Jacques was like when he first started working with us- a bit off at first, but he soon got stuck in. I can really see the resemblance.”

“I’d hope so- he’s my twin brother, after all.” She sighed. “I know he let you down, when he left.”

“He didn’t leave- I thought he was going to, but he came back.”

“He… he did?” Kit asked, turning to stare at her.

“Yeah,” Georgie replied. There was something she wasn’t saying, but Kit didn’t know what it was- nor was she sure she wanted to know.

“Did he come down to London with you, or is he still in Manchester?” Georgie blinked at her.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know what?” Kit asked, although she was starting to have a horrible suspicion.

“It’s been a year now, I thought you knew.”

“I’ve not been in touch with either of my brothers for a long time,” Kit replied, really hoping Georgie would stop beating around the bush and get to the point.

“Jacques died last year, during a jewellery blag. I tried to tell him to stop, to wait for the guv, but he wouldn’t listen. He gave chase, and ended up in the river.” She was silent for a moment, before awkwardly patting Kit on the shoulder. “I’m really sorry,” she said.

Kit couldn’t speak- she was too busy trying to take in all that Georgie had said. Jacques had come back here, and stayed for seven years- it had to have been after he’d died last year, in the real world. That went some way to answer her question of how time worked here. But that did not make her feel reassured. How could it, if her brother was now dead in both worlds, if she had lost him all over again?

“Are you alright?” Georgie asked, after a while. “Look, I’m sorry you had to hear it like this, I really am. And I’m sorry we weren’t able to do more for Jacques. But the thing is, and I mean this as respectfully as possible, Jacques died because, ultimately, he didn’t listen- not to me, not to the guv, not to anyone- and he didn’t let us help him when it mattered. So, if you want my advice, learn from his mistakes. Understand that being here, where the guv is, is the right place to be- and work with us, not against us.”

Kit nodded. She still couldn’t think of anything to say in response- though luckily, she didn’t need to, as at that moment the door to the interview room opened, and Dupin and Mills came out.

“Thank you, Mr. Dupin,” Mills said, before walking out of the station, not even acknowledging Kit or Georgie. Dupin looked at both of them and smiled.

“He gave us everything, the whole bloody network- suppliers, dealers, all of it. We just have to turn a blind eye to one last deal, and we can run him out of town forever!”

“So you’re letting him off? That is just plain wrong, Olaf,” Kit replied, finally able to speak.

“We can deal with the moral quandaries later, Bolls. For now, it’s lunchtime.”

“Lunchtime? It’s six o’clock!”

“Yes, lunchtime,” Dupin replied. Kit sighed, and went back to the incident room to find the box of clothes Bea had brought.

She brought the box across the treat to Lorenzo’s restaurant, which was already filling up with officers, and quietly slipped upstairs. Hopefully it would be okay if she used the flat again tonight, at least until she found somewhere else to stay- or until she went home.

The box contained a white leather jacket, an electric blue jumper, black skinny jeans and black high heeled boots. Not the sort of outfit she would normally wear, but a lot better than the one she currently had on. She changed quickly, transferring her warrant card to the inside pocket of her jacket, and Anwhistle’s notebook to the back pocket of her jeans. Just before she left, she checked her reflection, and pulled the pens out of her hair, shook it out, and walked downstairs.

Olaf

Lorenzo’s was always chaotic at lunchtime. Once the officers got a few drinks down them, most of them got loud and boisterous and at times a little annoying. Maybe that was why he’d chosen to sit alone that evening. Or maybe it had just been a long day, made longer by Kit Snicket and her theories and psychiatry.

 _Think of the devil,_ Olaf thought, as right at that moment Kit came sweeping into the restaurant. She’d let her hair down, and changed her clothes- and somehow, she was more attractive in the skinny jeans and leather jacket than she had been in the short dress.

In that moment, Olaf knew two things. One, he really, really wanted to sleep with Kit Snicket. Two, he never, ever would.

“You found your way okay?” he asked, pouring out two glasses of white wine. She rolled her eyes, and gave a small smile. _Oh, bloody hell,_ he thought, before offering her a glass.

“Cheers,” she muttered, before taking a sip.

Kit

Several glasses of wine later, Kit was feeling more relaxed than she had since… well, since before she came here, certainly.

“I love lunch,” Dupin muttered. They were sitting at one of the small tables together, and even the prospect of spending the evening in his company sounded less odious now that she was drunk.

“I invented this world, you know,” she said, not bothering to hold back at this point. Besides- it was a decent world, all things considered. She should be proud of inventing it.

“I invented something once too- the bruise-free groin slap.”

“It’s all gone a bit to shit, hasn’t it?” Kit asked, ignoring his comment. “If it makes you feel any better, it’s gone to shit for me too- my brother’s dead, I’m divorced, and now I’m down here.” She frowned, taking another sip of wine. “What about you, did you move because of Jacques too?”

“Could you not start with me? I’m the Count of bloody Manchester, it says so on me door.” Kit noticed that the wine was making both of their accents more pronounced- broadcasting just how Northern she actually was, despite her posh London boarding school education, to anyone who happened to be listening.

“You’re not gonna keep me here for seven bloody years,” she said. “I’m going home- I’m gonna go to my little girl’s birthday party.”

“How much have you had?” Dupin asked, counting up the bottles and glasses crowded on their table. “Blimey, you’re completely pissed, aren’t you?”

“And you’re a bloody figment,” Kit replied.

“Yeah, you are completely pissed.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” she muttered, feeling a wave of nausea wash over her.

“You know what, that doesn’t surprise me.” Shakily, he got to his feet. “Come on, I think you’ve had enough for one night. Let’s get you upstairs.”

Olaf

It was a bit of an effort getting her upstairs to the flat, a combination of the crowds of officers, her drunken state and the high heeled boots she wore. Finally, though, they made it to the living room, where she promptly collapsed onto the ugly zebra-print sofa.

“D’you have a bucket or something, in case you do end up being sick?” he asked, filling up two glasses of water and setting one down on the coffee table beside her.

“I don’t need your help,” she said. She reached out an arm blindly for the water, almost knocking it over.

“Everyone does,” Olaf said simply, sitting down on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, his back to Kit. “They’re sharpening the axe for coppers like me, you know. But I’ll tell you this much, Bolls. Up until the last second, I will be out there making a difference.” He heard Kit moving, possibly rolling over.

“I really am gonna be sick,” she said. “You should probably go.” He stood up, drinking a bit more of his water. “Oh, before you go,” she said, “there’s a notebook in my back pocket. It’s Anwhistle’s, from the junk-yard. You can have a look, if you give it back and promise no funny business.

“As you wish, Lady Bolls,” he said, carefully removing the notebook from her pocket, making a point not to touch her, to only touch the book. Before he left, he grabbed a bowl from the kitchen- not as good as a bucket, but it would do in a pinch- and the red blanket from the bed. The bowl he set down next to the water, the blanket he covered her with.

He brought the book downstairs, to where Georgie was sitting with her own glass of wine.

“Georgie girl, take a look at this,” he said, handing her the notebook. “What do you make of the numbers?”

“They could be flight numbers, or part of some code or other,” she suggested.

“What about that, there? Charlie?” he asked, pointing to a word scribbled on the other page.

“Isn’t that what they call you if you’re gay?” she asked, pushing her glasses up her nose a little.

“And there I was thinking it was bloody perfume!” He sighed, and looked over at Bert, who was standing by the stereo, turning the music up louder and louder. “Bert, Bert, Bert, will you turn that down? Kit’s trying to sleep up there!” Bert obediently turned it down.

“Grazie, Signor Dupin,” Lorry said. Bert grinned, and patted the skinny Italian man on the arm.

“Grassy-arse, Lorry, grassy-arse!” Lorry rolled his eyes.

“Yes, Bert, that is a Spanish joke.”

“Lorry, you go get yourself a drink.

“No, Signor Dupin. I go upstairs, stare at the fridge.”

“Good man,” Olaf said.

Kit

Kit was pretty sure she was dreaming- though it was a dream she wasn’t particularly keen to wake up from. Beatrice was there, cuddled up beside her like she used to do when she was little.

“Beatrice,” she whispered. “You should get back to your own bed. Go on, sweetheart.”

When she woke, it was dark, and she was alone on the sofa. She sat up groggily, wrapping the red blanket around her shoulders and taking a few sips of water. She had to find a way to trap Gregor Anwhistle. Beatrice was waiting for her, Kit couldn’t keep her waiting for too long. _Stop Gregor Anwhistle,_ she reminded herself. _Stop him, and get home._


	4. Chapter Three: In Which The A-Team Borrow A Speedboat

Chapter Three- In Which The A-Team Borrow A Speedboat

Bertrand

The next morning, Bert and Bea drove over to the arches near the Tower Bridge. Kit had told them to go there- part of her plan to lure in Gregor Anwhistle and arrest him, apparently. She’d instructed them to place a fake message nearby, so that Jerome Mills would pick it up, follow its instructions and meet up with Anwhistle- proving that he worked for him.

“I feel like I should be in uniform,” Bea said, looking over to where she’d placed the message. Bert watched her for a moment, watched the way the early morning light caught in her black hair. They rarely got to do things like this together, it made a nice change.

“Nah, we’re meant to be undercover,” he replied.

“Undercover, on a secret mission… It’s pretty glamorous, isn’t it? I feel like a proper detective.”

Bert was about to reply, when Kit’s voice came over the police radio.

“Bert, are you in position?”

“We are indeed,” Bert replied. “Did you manage to talk to the guv about all this?”

“We don’t have time for all that, Bert- we have to focus on getting Gregor Anwhistle.” She was quiet for a moment. “Look, the crime squad gave us the drop-off point for Mills’ messages. Are you there?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Right, okay. Have you got the message in place?”

“We do- Bea set it up not long before you called.”

“Alright. Now, if Mills takes the bait, then he’ll read the message telling him to meet at Anwhistle’s place, and we can follow him. That way, we can prove that they’re working together, and we’ve got reasonable connection. After that, we can arrest Anwhistle, and I can go home.”

Bea covered her mouth with her hand, holding back a giggle. Kit seemed to be pretty obsessed with Anwhistle, and this idea of _going home,_ whatever that meant. Did she just mean going back to Manchester? If that were the case, though, why didn’t she just ask for a transfer and move back? Bert sighed, and opened the door.

“I’ll just be a sec,” he said. There was a wall just across from where they were parked, and a rickety iron staircase. Bert looked up, and spotted a sign for a public toilet at the top. He didn’t really want to have to use it, but needs must.

When he came out, he heard a commotion down below, voices yelling. Jerome Mills, and Beatrice.

“Get off me!” Bea yelled. “Get off me right now!”

“Beattie!” Bert yelled. “Beattie, I’m coming!” He sprinted down the steps. Mills had them outnumbered- he must’ve brought at least half a dozen of his goons with him- and one of them had grabbed Beatrice.

“It’s the police!” he yelled as he ran. “Nobody move!”

“Will you shut up, both of you?” Mills snapped, once Bert reached the ground. “Did you really think this was going to work? Did you think you could just plant some stupid fake message and you’d be able to trap me? You really are a plonker, aren’t you?” With that, he punched Bert in the stomach, forcing him to double over. “You know,” he said, conversationally, as though he hadn’t punched anyone, “I think I’ll need some kind of insurance- just to keep things running smoothly. Put her in the car,” he instructed his accomplice, the one who’d grabbed Bea.

“Bert!” she cried. “Don’t let them do this! You have to stop them, please!”

“I thought I told both of you to shut up?” Mills asked, before punching Bert once again- this time knocking him to the ground, the impact making his glasses fall off.

By the time he’d managed to sit up and put them back on- thankfully undamaged- they were gone.

Kit

Kit glared at the radio in her hand. It had been silent for the last twenty minutes, and she didn’t know why. Had something happened to Bert and Bea? They’d planted the message ages ago- surely they should be back by now.

Finally, the door burst open, and Bertrand- just Bertrand, on his own- came bursting into the incident room.

“Are all the radios in this place broken or something?” he asked, glaring at all of them. “They’ve got Bea- Mills and his cronies, they’ve got her!”

“Right,” Georgie said. “Fernald, you mobilise all units. Bert, you give us a description of the vehicle.”

“This was your idea, ma’am. Remember that. If she dies, it’ll all be your fault.”

“Look, I wasn’t the one who did the deal with the devil, Bert.”

“It doesn’t matter. How are we going to stop them?”

Finally, the door to Dupin’s office swung open. For a moment he stood in the doorway, surveying the scene. Then, he adjusted his black gloves, and answered Bert’s question.

“Simple. We’ll fire up the Quattro.”

* * *

As Dupin tore through the London streets, Kit gave another flick through Anwhistle's notebook, checking to see if there was anything she’d missed before.

“Guv,” Fernald’s voice came over the radio. “We’ve got a confirmation- the car Mills was driving was registered to Gregor Anwhistle.”

“Right. Fernald, give us everything you’ve got on Anwhistle,” Dupin replied. Kit glanced at him, resisting the urge to say _I told you so._

“All we’ve really got is some surveillance, guv- some of him at his yard, and some of him at the docks- apparently, he keeps boats.”

“What’s the name of the boat?” Dupin asked. Kit looked down at the notebook, something clicking into place.

“It’s a little hard to tell, but I think it’s the Prince Charlie,” Fernald replied.

“Charlie?” Kit asked, frowning at the notebook. “These times in the diary must be tide times, then. Anwhistle’s shipping drugs into the city using one of his own boats!”

“Right,” he said, pressing a few buttons on the radio. “Georgie, round up the cavalry. We’re heading to the river, to Tower Bridge.”

“I could kiss you!” Kit said, tucking the notebook away and smiling at Dupin.

“Don’t let me stop you!” he replied.

* * *

Once they had all reached the docks, Dupin had them all gather round so that they could hear his plan.

“So, we’ll have three units. I’ll lead the first unit, and hopefully we'll flush them into the arms of the second unit led by my esteemed lady colleague here,” he said, nodding towards Kit. “Uniform, you can mop up.”

“So, which team’s which?” Georgie asked.

“Uniform, you’re the C-Team. DI Snicket, you’re leading the B-Team. And I’m the A-Team.”

“God have mercy,” Kit muttered, rolling her eyes.

Taking the B-Team- which consisted of everyone but Dupin, Georgie, Bert and the uniformed officers- Kit got into position. From here, they could see where Mills and his cronies had gathered, along with several crates containing bags of what appeared to be cocaine. A car drove up to them, and a man climbed out- Anwhistle.

“Radio silence, everyone,” Kit instructed. “I need Anwhistle alive. Do you understand? Alive. He's my destiny.” They all looked at her. “Sorry. That's not really helping, is it?” she said, shaking her head slightly.

Olaf

Meanwhile, Olaf, Georgie and Bert had made their way round the back of an abandoned building by the docks. They could see what Mills and Anwhistle were up to as well- and what had become of their captive.

“There she is,” Bert said, once he spotted Beatrice. “Right, I’ve had it.” Before Olaf could do or say anything to stop him, he ran in front of the building, standing in plain sight of Mills, Anwhistle and all their accomplices.

“Bert! Bertrand Markson, what the Hell are you doing?!” Olaf yelled, to no avail. “Shit! Right, this is the A-Team,” he said, talking into his radio. “We’re going in.”

“Mills, this is the police!” Bert yelled. “You’re surrounded!” Before he could say any more, he was cut off by the rapid-fire banging of a machine gun.

“He’s gonna get himself killed,” Georgie said, shaking her head.

“Not today,” Olaf replied, before emerging from behind the building. Together, the three of them tried to get as many shots in as they could- though admittedly the distance made it difficult.

Bert ducked behind a stack of empty barrels, while Georgie stood behind a couple of large crates, continuing to fire at the accomplices. Olaf kept his gun aiming at Mills, and his eyes on Bea, who was being dragged away from the fight by Anwhistle. As soon as they were gone, Mills got into his car and started to drive away- though not before Olaf had managed to hit his engine, effectively stopping his car.

Kit

Kit groaned. She’d heard the machine gun fire, but didn’t know to whom the gun belonged, or what they’d been shooting at.

“Dupin, do you read me? Dupin, do you read me? What the hell's going on? Over.” She sighed, before deciding to try a different tack. “B-Team to the A-Team, do you read me?”

“All teams, they’re heading your way on foot,” Dupin said, finally responding to them. “Snicket, the A-Team are cut off now. Even I can’t walk on water. You have to keep Anwhistle in sight, but don’t do anything else.”

“Everybody, move!” Kit ordered, before heading in a different direction- the direction in which she could see Anwhistle was dragging a terrified-looking Bea.

She caught up to them a little further down the river, beside another abandoned building. Anwhistle had his gun pressed firmly against Bea’s forehead, and Bea was shaking and trying very hard not to cry. _Here we are again, Gregor,_ Kit thought. _You, me, a gun and a hostage._ This was what she needed to do, she realised. Stand up to Gregor Anwhistle, do it right this time. If she could get this right, she could go home.

“Don’t worry, Beatrice- you’re gonna be just fine!” Kit said. _I saved my Beatrice, I saved my little girl- I can save this Beatrice too. I know I can._ “Hello, Gregor,” she said, conversationally. “So, what happens now, eh?”

“You get lost, alright? This is my show, d’you understand? I make the rules.”

“Oh, change the script, Gregor. I have literally heard it all before. And anyway, you’re wrong. It’s not your show any more, it’s mine.”

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

“I have to fix where I went wrong earlier, and get it right this time. Then I can reclaim my destiny, and go home. I’m finally strong enough to do that now, Gregor. I’m finally strong enough to wake up.”

“Stop it, ma’am, please- this isn’t helping!” Bea pleaded.

Before Kit could attempt to reassure her that the situation was well in hand, Dupin’s voice came on over the radio. “Hey, Snicket! The A-Team are back in business!”

Kit glanced over her shoulder, wondering what he meant by that- and saw a speedboat come racing up the river towards them. Three figures were standing in the boat, one wearing a brown leather jacket, one wearing a long black coat and the other wearing a black leather jacket. All three were carrying guns- though as they got closer, Kit realised that Olaf had picked up a machine gun from somewhere. Had the situation been a little less tense, Kit would’ve found it almost funny.

Finally, they parked the boat right across from where Kit, Anwhistle and Bea were standing.

“If you lot don’t leave right now, I’ll blow her head off!” Anwhistle shouted.

“You heard him, stay back!” Kit told them.

“Snicket, what do you think you’re doing?” Dupin demanded.

“Will you all stop staring at me? I don’t like it!” Anwhistle demanded.

“You’re under arrest,” Kit said. “For drug trafficking, abduction, and for shooting me in the head!”

Anwhistle shoved Bea aside, knocking her to the ground, and aimed his gun at the trio on the speedboat. No sooner had he done so, however, than Dupin started firing at him with the machine gun, forcing him to fall back against a nearby pile of barrels.

“There’ll be no more drug addicts made here, Anwhistle,” he informed the man, who appeared to still be alive- though his left cheek was bleeding.

“You told me you had an empire going, _back in the day,_ ” Kit said, snapping the handcuffs around his wrists. “Well, you’ve had your day. You’re under arrest!”

She stood up, looking around. She was still standing beside an abandoned building, on the banks of the River Thames. She was still wearing a white leather jacket and dark jeans, a pair of sunglasses pushed up into her curly brown hair. Nothing had changed- why hadn’t anything changed? She’d made the arrest, she’d saved Bea, she’d done everything right. She’d. Done. Everything. Right. So why hadn’t anything changed?

“Did you hear me?” she said, louder this time, talking to Dupin and the others. “He’s under arrest!”

“Yeah, Bolly,” Dupin said, sighing. “We heard you.”

* * *

Once uniform had arrived to take Anwhistle and his associates away, Kit felt ready to talk to Olaf again.

“What was all that, back there? With the speedboat and the machine gun? Was that your attempt at being cool?”  
  
“Excuse me, did you somehow manage to miss the part where I saved your life?”

“That could very well have stopped me from getting home! I was meant to face this alone!”

“Listen, Snickerdoodle, you were seconds away from death just now.” He shook his head. “Look, it's a nasty, vicious, messed-up world but if you listen to me, you just might get through it!” For a second, they glared at each other, before he continued. “Alright, I don’t normally say this, but I can make an exception today. You were right, okay? You were right about Gregor Anwhistle. You’ve got a knack of knowing how folk tick- all that psychiatry stuff.”

“It’s psychology!” Kit snapped.

“It’s the same bloody thing!” Dupin replied.

“We’re not having this stupid argument. I had it all figured out, I had a plan and now it’s all ruined! I was supposed to go home!”

“Well, it looks like your presence is required around here just a little bit longer, by me.”

Bertrand

“What are they arguing about?” Georgie asked, studying their senior colleagues.

“I don’t know,” Bert replied. They were standing by the Quattro. Beatrice was sitting in the front seat, wrapped in a bright red blanket and thankfully unharmed. “Are you alright?” he asked, crouching down so he could talk to her properly.

“Yeah, I suppose. What about you?”

“It’s all in a day’s work,” Bert replied, with a small shrug.

“Yeah,” she said. “Bert?” Before he could reply, she leaned forward and hugged him tightly.

As soon as she’d let go and settled back into her seat, Bert spotted something out of the corner of his eye. It was Mills- somehow, he’d managed to escape arrest, and now, he was trying to get away.

“Hey!” Bert yelled, running after him. Mills turned around, rolling his eyes when he realised who it was that had called out to him- and that Bert had his gun out.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he said. “Listen, there are chaps that can pull the trigger, and chaps that can’t, and you-” Bert shot him in the foot before he could finish the sentence. “Oh my God, you shot my bloody toes off!”

“I’m not nervous,” Bert said, putting his gun away. “I’m just cautious.”

Kit

Kit made her way back to the Quattro, wanting to talk to Bea, check to see how she was now that the Anwhistle situation was taken care of.

“How are you feeling, Bea?” she asked. Kit may not be able to get back to her own Beatrice right this second, but she could help this one, even just in a small way.

“Better now- though I really thought I was gonna die back there.”

“Well, you’re here now, Bea- and that’s the important thing.” She sighed. “We’re both still here.”

“I saw my life flashing before my eyes, and everything. They say that, don’t they? That when you die, you see all the mistakes you’ve ever made, in that last moment between life and death.”

“Yeah,” Kit replied. “Yeah, that’s right.”

* * *

Kit was still thinking about that later, as she sat in front of her TV. She’d thought that, if she didn’t _think_ about getting messages from the useless box for five minutes, she might actually get some, but it was useless.

“Why isn’t it working? It worked for Jacques, why won’t it work for me?” She was about to give up, when a familiar voice came from the TV. The image didn’t match up- it was a strange clown dressed in white, who looked a little like David Bowie, but not quite. There was something weirdly familiar about the image, but she couldn’t pinpoint what it was, or where she might have seen it before.

“Go to sleep,” the voice said. It was Beatrice’s voice- _her_ Beatrice, her daughter. But it couldn’t be, not really. It was just her own wishful thinking.

“Beatrice?” she asked, moving closer to the screen.

“You’ve just been shot,” not-Beatrice said. “A second ago. You're lying on the wet ground. Don't fight to wake up. It'll hurt too much.”

“Beatrice,” Kit breathed. “Beatrice, I am so sorry.”

“You’ll never make it to her party. Or the next one, or the next. All you’ve got is your memories.” An image flashed on screen then, of a car exploding. Kit remembered that day- the one that had made her and her brothers into orphans. “It doesn’t have to hurt, though- you can just let go.”

“Never,” Kit said firmly, getting to her feet. She found a tape recorder in a chest of drawers, popped in a tape and pressed record. She wasn’t sure why she was doing this- only that it felt necessary, to have some kind of spoken testimony she could listen to if she ever started to forget how she’d got here, or lost sight of what was important- getting back to her daughter.

“My name is Kit Snicket,” she said. “I've just been shot and that bullet has sent me back to 1981. I may be one second away from life, or one second away from death. They say that as you die, your life flashes before you. All those memories and mistakes that form us. Well, bring it on. My life can flash away as much as it likes because I am not going to die. I'm coming back to you, Beatrice.”

Then, she pressed stop, and set the recorder down. If she closed her eyes, she could still see Beatrice- see her waving goodbye, her red beret back on her head. Then she opened her eyes, and she was gone.


	5. Chapter Four: In Which Kit Blows Out A Spark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: This chapter is probably a good time to point out that not every character in this fic is going to have a direct Snicketverse counterpart, simply because there are not enough characters in the Snicketverse for that to be possible. From here on out, minor characters who only appear in one episode will only have a Snicketverse counterpart if I can think of an appropriate one- otherwise, they won't, and they'll just have whatever name they originally had in Ashes To Ashes.

Chapter Four: In Which Kit Blows Out A Spark

Kit

Kit sighed, and took another sip of wine. It had been a couple of days since Gregor Anwhistle had been arrested, and nothing had really changed. Kit was still no closer to working out how to get home, and she hadn’t been presented with any more situations which seemed clearly orchestrated to send her home.

She sighed again, and switched on the TV. She couldn’t sleep, and wanted some kind of distraction- or at least some noise to fill the quiet flat. Kit was still staying in the flat above Lorenzo’s restaurant- part of her knew that she should probably be looking for somewhere else to stay, but that felt far too much like putting down roots, and that was the last thing Kit wanted to do.

“Note to psyche,” she muttered, as a news report detailing the conflict in Egypt against Islamic fundamentalists began on the small screen. “A little less irony, and a little more Dynasty would be nice.” She changed the channel, hoping to get something a little bit lighter.

“The eyes of the world will be on Lady Diana Spencer as she becomes the wife of the heir to the throne and takes the princess…” another reporter said. Kit sighed, and changed the channel again. She’d almost forgotten that the Royal Wedding was supposed to happen this year- knowing how this story would end, though, she wasn’t really in the mood to be reminded of how it began.

“It's been a long, hard struggle for justice, but today a jury found my client not guilty of assaulting a police officer.” Kit blinked, and put down her glass. She sat up and stared at the screen, surprised at being confronted with the sight of her mother. “Until today. there has been no recognition from the Metropolitan Police of anything wrong with the way this investigation had been carried out. Today, finally, up against the wire, confronted by their own lies and evasions, it has been admitted.”

“Mrs Snicket, can you clarify that statement?” a reporter asked.

Kit, meanwhile, sat hunched in front of the TV, staring at her mother. “Mummy,” she whispered, before the image on the screen changed again.

It was like her own memories from the Royal Wedding had been recorded, and were being projected onto the TV screen. She’d been so lonely, stuck at boarding school away from her brothers. And while she’d wanted to go home to spend the day with her family, things had not worked out that way.

“Everyone else has gone home to watch the royal wedding with their families. But you're staying here on your own, Kitty,” Kit’s mother explained. She turned to the teacher. “Make sure she concentrates- she's easily distracted. Goodbye, Kitty.” And then with a little wave to Kit, she was gone

“It's not real,” Kit reminded herself. “I will not get upset.”

Another image flashed up, another memory visualised. Kit and her parents in a car, a red balloon, Kit getting out of the car so she could go after it, a shout… and finally, an explosion.

“I’m here to see them before I die,” Kit realised. “Aren’t I?”

* * *

The next morning, Kit breezed into the incident room, which looked a lot busier than it had yesterday.

“Good morning, imaginary constructs!” she said. Bert nodded, and went back to sitting behind his desk.

“Morning, ma’am,” he replied.

“It actually looks quite busy in here, what's going on?”

“Oh, the guv's like a dog on a hot tin roof. Special Branch are all over him about the royal wedding.”

Just then, the door to the small office within the incident room opened, and Olaf came out and addressed the room.

“In case some of you hadn't noticed, we are about to witness the joyous union of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. In the meantime, though, we've got a bunch of jessies on the Isle of Dogs about to stage a protest!” He looked at Kit. “Snicket, you’re with me. The rest of you, go straight to the Isle of Dogs, move along any protestors. Mush!”

Kit and Olaf left the office, and got into the Quattro. They tore out of the car-park before Kit could put on her seatbelt, and headed straight to the location.

“Why the rush?” Kit asked, buckling on her seatbelt.

“We’ve gotta stamp this out before the press get wind of it,” Olaf replied. “And take that seatbelt off, you’re a police officer, not a bloody vicar!”

They continued to tear through the streets. Part of Kit wanted to laugh- there was a thrill in driving a bit recklessly, a thrill that neither Jacques nor Lemony had ever seemed to really understand. She’d known to expect this kind of insane driving from Olaf, based on what Jacques had told her- and as they sped towards an underpass with a large pile of cardboard boxes stacked up at one end, she couldn’t help feeling a bit excited. At least, until Olaf stopped the car.

“Right, we’ll go the long way round- I’m not scratching this baby.” They started to drive back down towards the entrance of the underpass. “I used to do this with Jacques sometimes,” he said, almost casually. “He hated it.”

“What can I say,” Kit replied, smiling. “We were always very different people.”

They found the others gathered outside of a pub called The Finish. Once they’d parked the car, they made their way inside the pub, where Georgie and Bert were waiting behind the bar.

“The family have locked themselves in upstairs, they say they’re not coming down,” Georgie explained.

“This is the last place left,” Bert added. “The rest have been compuls… compuls… they didn’t wanna leave, but they’ve had to.”

“Any journalists?” Olaf asked.

“Just a couple of locals,” Georgie replied. She stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray that had been left on the bar. “This is hardly CID stuff, is it, guv?”

“It’s like a powder keg round here, just waiting for a spark. Well, it’s not gonna happen- not on my patch, and not for Di. Bert, go kick the door down, let’s get them out of there.”

“Wait, wait, hang on,” Kit said, holding her hand up. “Why risk a spark? Who’s the dominant personality up there?”

“The landlord, Harvey Mitchum, he’s hard as nails,” Georgie replied.

“Who else?”

“His wife, who wouldn't say boo to a goose, and his son, who looks as though he might have spent too much time in the shallow end of the gene pool.”

“Okay,” Kit said, nodding. “Alright then, look and learn, constructs.” She walked out of the pub, and stood beneath the window. “Mr. Mitchum?” she called. “Mr. Mitchum?”

“What’s going on?” someone behind her asked, but she ignored them.

“Mr. Mitchum, my name’s DI Kit Snicket. I wonder if myself and my colleague could come up and have a chat. See if we could help you achieve the conclusion you're looking for!”

For a moment, there was nothing, and she wondered if Mitchum had heard her. Behind her, she heard Olaf say something about knocking the door down, just as a set of keys was dangled out of an upstairs window, reaching a spot just above her head. She smiled, then reached up and grabbed them.

“My dad was the landlord of this pub, and his dad before him,” explained Harvey Mitchum, as Kit and Olaf sat on the sofa in his flat. “It'll be his, when the time's right,” he continued, gesturing to an awkward-looking, pudgy boy perched on a stool beside his father’s chair. “Generations of skilled workers drank here- now they've all been chucked on the slag-heap by Thatcher and Heseltine. Homes destroyed to make buildings and offices, with no new homes built to replace 'em!”

“It’s the march of history, Mr. Mitchum,” Kit replied.

“Listen, Hitler couldn’t drive my dad out of this pub, and I’ll tell you this much for nothing, Mr. Dupin- no poxy Docklands development's going to succeed where the Luftwaffe failed! We ain't going nowhere!”

“The thing is, Mr. Mitchum, that-” Kit began.

“Where will you be watching the Royal Wedding?” Olaf asked, before she could finish.

“We won't be watching it anywhere! It's a charade, to paper over the cracks of mass unemployment and the wholesale destruction of working-class communities!”

“You’re a cheerful bugger, aren’t you?” Olaf snapped. “Look, Mr. Mitchum, I'm not interested in spoiling your protest. What I do ask is that you sit up here quietly until after Di and Charles have tied the knot. Can we shake hands on that?”

“Can I just-” Kit tried again.

“Do you mind if I have another garibaldi, Mrs. Mitchum?” Olaf asked, reaching for the biscuit tin. “They’re lovely stuff!”

“Thank you, Mr. Dupin,” Mrs. Mitchum replied.

“Could you all just shut up and listen to me? This is my bloody fantasy, and I will be listened to!” Kit snapped.

“Excuse my colleague,” Olaf said, shaking his head. “Education of a toff, and the manners of a sewer rat!”

“Sorry,” Kit said. “I just wanted to say that I admire your stance, Mr. Mitchum, I really do. But there is no point in fighting a battle that can't be won. You know, in ten years' time, glass and steel will tower above us. The only thing that will remain from this street will be the street name. I've seen it, so I know. So, please, let us help you move on. There'll be other battles to fight in other places, and battles you may even have a chance of winning.” With her speech over, she smiled at the Mitchums, hoping that now they might have a sense of how pointless this particular battle was.

“Piss off,” Mr. Mitchum said, glaring at her. “Piss off and get out of my home.”

* * *

“Well, that went well,” Olaf said, once they got back to the station. Kit rolled her eyes.

“It’s all about profiling- it takes a little time.”

“I’m no expert on this profiling psychiatry bollocks, but I’m pretty sure you don’t give someone a big Doctor Who speech about life in the future if you want them to take you seriously as you poke your way through their brains.”

“It’s psychology, not psychiatry, how many bloody times!”

Before Olaf could reply, he was interrupted by a voice on his police radio.

“Guv, you are not gonna believe what's just happened back on the Isle of Dogs.”

It turned out that somebody had left a small pile of explosives near the Royal Docks- and that those explosives had been found by a small dog which, unfortunately, had not survived the encounter.

“There has been an incident over at the Royal Docks,” Olaf explained, addressing the whole team.

“What sort of incident?” Georgie asked.

“A bloody messy one, that’s what.” Quickly, he filled them all in on what had happened. “Now, if anyone laughs, I will attach jump leads to their genitalia.”

Kit covered her mouth, fighting back a laugh. She knew that this wasn’t really funny, but she couldn’t help it.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Oh, God.” She took a couple of deep breaths, controlling herself. “The thing is, some of my friends don't think I've got a sense of humour. An exploding dog, from my psyche!”

“If you've quite finished, DI Snicket.”

“You see, the thing is, my parents were…” she trailed off. “It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. What's the point? Carry on.”

“Are you sure?” Olaf asked. She nodded. “Now, Special Branch are as nervous as a virgin in a brothel, especially since HRH was sent a letter bomb in May.”

Kit nodded- she could remember hearing about that on the news at the time, which was probably why it had ended up being included in this story. She wasn’t going to say that out loud, though- she’d probably reached her quota for weird remarks today.

“In fact, they’re so bloody nervous about it, they want to investigate this one themselves,” Olaf continued.

“I hope you told them where to get off, guv,” Georgie said.

“I did- which means that my reputation is on the line. So there will be no hiccups between now and the tossing of the royal bouquet, is that understood?”

“Yes, guv,” they all replied, even Kit.

“Good! So, if some nutter is messing around with dynamite on my patch, then I wanna know about it! Let's round up all them anti-establishment toe-rags, all of the usual lunatics and losers, and put the fear of God up 'em. Questions?” Kit smiled, and raised her hand. “What?”

“Can I come, please?” she asked.

* * *

There were a fair number of anti-establishment toe-rags, as it happened. Olaf’s preferred way of dealing with them, apparently, was a bizarre form of ritual humiliation. He’d gathered them up, then raided a supply of second hand costumes from an old dressing-up box, and handed them out at random. The end result was an assortment of pirates, princesses and one poor bloke who’d ended up with a very unflattering Peter Pan costume.

“Gentlemen,” Olaf began, walking up and down the line of costumed anarchists while carrying a pool cue. “You all have several things in common, all of which irritate me immensely. Poor skin, donkey jackets, and membership of anarchist groups.”

“I don't think I'm supposed to be here,” Peter Pan piped up. “I'm part of the Anti-Nazi League.”

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking!” Olaf snapped. “Now, one of you gobs of pond life has been mucking around with explosives. Why was that?” He paused for dramatic effect. “Because in your dark, twisted little minds, you think trying to stop the redevelopment of the East End is an act of revolution. Well, you’re wrong.”

“Is all of this really necessary to get your point across?” Kit asked, but Olaf was far too fired up by now to hear her.

“So when you limp out of here, you will spread the word amongst your scummy comrades, and tell them that I will personally remove the intestines from anyone who even thinks about causing trouble this week. Do I make myself absolutely clear?” He brandished the pool cue pointedly. “Well?”

There were several nods and murmurings of agreement, even from Peter Pan, who apparently had decided not to mention the fact that he wasn’t actually an anarchist again.

* * *

Once they were all back at the incident room, Kit decided to do a bit of digging, and see what she could learn about her parents. As a child, the only thing she’d known about their work was the fact that they did far too much of it. Now, though, she was building up a picture from the various news articles she could find, of two people who loved their work as much as they seemed to love each other. There was no mention of their three children, but she supposed that made sense. They were lawyers, not celebrities- their personal lives didn’t really matter.

“Alright, Skywalker?” Bert called out. Kit looked up, to see that Fernald had come into the incident room, a piece of paper clamped carefully in one of his prosthetic hands. It was these double-hooked prosthetics that had earned him his nickname, apparently, after Luke Skywalker in the last Star Wars movie- which, Kit had to remind herself, was The Empire Strikes Back, not Revenge of the Sith.

“Oh, you’re working, then?” Fernald asked, gesturing to where Bert and Georgie were sitting surrounded by files and papers. “It’s not April Fool’s, is it?” He opened the door to Olaf’s office. “Guv, I’ve got something here you might wanna take a look at.”

They all gathered around Georgie's desk, so they could take a look at the note Fernald had brought in. The words “Forget the dog, next time it’s Moore- London Liberation Front” had been formed out of letters cut from various magazines and newspapers, like a ransom note.

“London Liberation Front?” Olaf asked, frowning down at the note.

“It’s a new one to me, guv,” Georgie replied.

“Next time it’s Moore,” Kit said, pointing to the second part of the note. “What could that mean?”

“That’s obvious- they misspelled _more,”_ Georgie replied.

“No, no, the syntax is too good- look, they have the correct usage of a contracted apostrophe. If they know how to use that, then they know how to spell _more.”_ Kit countered.

“Yes, thank you for that, Miss Jean bloody Brody!” Olaf snapped. He pointed at the note again. “Right, now we need to work out who Moore is.”

“Bobby Moore,” Bert said, snapping his fingers.

“Bobby Moore?” Olaf asked, incredulously.

“The footballer,” Bert explained.

“Yeah, I know who he is, you div! Why would anyone wanna blow up Bobby Moore?”

“To be fair, he _was_ in Escape To Victory,” Georgie pointed out.

“Look, we are not going to have the aristocracy of this country blown to smithereens, not on my watch! Is that understood?”

“Yes, guv,” Georgie replied, and the others nodded in agreement.

“Right, I want you, Einstein, to trace the original publication of the letters from this note,” Olaf said, pointing at Bert.

“What about Daniel Moore?” Bea piped up, from where she still sat at her desk. “I’d bet he’s got a few enemies!”

“If I wanted your opinion, Baudelaire, I’d bring you over to this desk and ask you for it!” Olaf said.

“You do have to admit, though, she has a point- it would certainly make a lot more sense than wanting to blow up a random footballer,” Kit pointed out.

“Fine- get your coat, Snickerdoodle, let’s go talk to Danny Moore.”

* * *

Danny Moore worked in a tall, swanky office building, in an equally swanky office near the top floor. While they went up in the elevator, Olaf gave kit a quick rundown on the man.

“Danny Moore is on the board of the Docklands Development Agency. Born in the East End, dragged himself up by his boot straps, worth at least a million.”

“Really?” Kit smiled. “A real, living breathing Thatcherite businessman? How completely brilliant.”

“Personal friend of the Great Handbag herself, so try and behave.”

“Don’t worry, I promise not to twang his red braces.” Just then, the elevator reached the right floor, and the doors slid open. A good-looking man with light blonde hair and a light blue suit greeted them, smiling brightly. “More than once,” Kit amended.

“Hi, Danny Moore,” Danny Moore said, by way of greeting them. “What's all this about?”

“Mr. Moore, we found a small amount of explosives on land near the Royal Docks,” Olaf explained.

“Well, technically, a small dog found it,” Kit added. “He's an even smaller dog now. The thing is, it wasn't made public- and yet the warning note we received mentioned that incident and indicated you could be a possible future target. Do you have any enemies, Mr Moore?”

“With what I'm doing, you upset a few people, big ones and little ones- I get threats almost daily.”

“Well, if you will go around destroying communities,” Olaf countered.

“People are gonna be disconcerted, I don’t deny that,” Moore replied. He went over to the lift, opening the doors. “Look, sorry to cut this short, but I have a business meeting.”

Together, the three of them got into the lift. Kit sighed, and tapped her foot a couple of times on the floor. There were a few things that she wanted to say, about Thatcherism and the political legacy that it had left behind, for all that there had been widespread opposition at the time. Still, while this might be her dream, it was becoming clear that her “Doctor Who speeches” were not going over too well so far.

“You alright there, love?” Moore asked, breaking her out of her thoughts.

“Excuse my DI- she’s not the most attentive we’ve had, but we make do in these difficult times, don’t we?”

“Don’t you apologise for me!” Kit replied.

“Well, someone has to!” Olaf countered.

“Oh, don’t worry about it- there’s nothing wrong with being a bit of a dreamer- where would we be without them, eh?”

“Where would we be indeed?” Kit replied, smiling straight at Moore. Just then, the lift reached the ground floor, and the doors slid open.

“So, we’ll go ahead and arrange some protection for you, Mr. Moore,” Olaf said, as they all headed towards the door.

“It’s very kind of you to offer that, Mr. Dupin, but I’m going to have to politely decline.”

“It’s not really an offer, though- I insist. Your life is in danger here.”

“Well, life is always dangerous- that’s the thrill of it,” Moore countered. He turned to Kit. “I hope we’ll meet again soon.”

“That’s unlikely, I’m afraid- I’m not going to be here very long.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Olaf muttered, and with that the two of them left the building.


	6. Chapter Five: In Which A Spark Nearly Becomes A Fire

Chapter Five: In Which A Spark Nearly Becomes A Fire

Olaf

“Have you got anything on the London Liberation Front yet, Gina?” Olaf asked.

It was the next day, and they were still no closer to knowing what was going on with the London Liberation Front, or where the note threatening Danny Moore’s life had come from, and Olaf was starting to get frustrated. They were running out of time to get this situation under control, and he really didn’t want to know what would happen if they didn’t sort it out.

“Not a thing- to be honest, I think it’s just kids pissing about,” Georgie replied.

“Oh really? Well, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind when we’re picking bits of viscounts out of those lovely trees on the Mall.” He then turned his attention to Bert. “Markson, have you got that bloody note sorted yet?”

“I’m getting there- three of the letters are from The Mirror, two are from a Millwall programme, and this curly thing here…”

“The apostrophe?” Kit asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Yeah, that. It’s from the Woman’s Weekly, I think. The only thing I can’t work out is these weird O’s, I can’t seem to find them anywhere.”

The O’s in question looked a bit like circles that had A’s in them. Olaf was about to tell Bert to focus on trying to find where they’d come from, when the door to the incident room opened.

“There’s someone to see you, ma’am,” Fernald said, holding the door open for Mr. Daniel Moore to come into the room.

“There’s something I wanted to show you,” Moore explained.

“Yeah, I bet there is,” Georgie muttered.

“You carry on, Snicket- we’ll get on with the hard graft,” Olaf said, glaring at Moore. He knew it was ridiculous to feel jealous- Kit wasn’t interested, she had made that much pretty clear by now. But it didn’t stop the quick flash of green envy he felt as she walked out of the incident room after Moore.

Kit

It turned out that the thing Danny wanted to show her was a silver car- a DeLorean, to be more specific. Kit wanted to laugh- even by dream standards, this seemed almost too good to be real.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Danny asked, as they drove around the streets.

It was- and driving in this car was decidedly less chaotic than being in the Quattro- which, right now, seemed like a good thing. _Thank you, frontal cortex,_ Kit thought.

“Okay,” Danny said after a minute. “I’m gonna come straight to the point. Are there any men in your life?”

“No- I've given up on men.”

“What about kids?”

“I have one little girl- well, not so little. Beatrice.” She sighed. “She's not with me at the moment, though.”

“Where is she?” he asked.

“She's with her godmother, Rachel. I'm on my way to her birthday party- or, at least, I hope I am.”

“You're an enigma wrapped in a riddle, Kit.”

“You don't know the half of it,” Kit replied.

“Well, then show me.” Kit didn’t say anything, and they continued to drive in silence for a minute or so before Danny spoke up again. “One more thing- have dinner with me.”

Far too soon, they reached the station again, and Danny parked the car right outside. Kit sighed, not really wanting to get out. She didn’t have nearly as much control over this dream as she’d like, but even so, she wanted to control this small part at least.

“Can I walk you in?” Danny asked. Kit sighed again, and shook her head.

“No, thanks.” The last thing she needed was for her co-workers to have even more reasons to make stupid jokes about her, and make her brief stint in their company more unpleasant than it needed to be. “I will have dinner with you, though- if the offer’s still on.”

“Of course it is- I’ll call you.”

“Alright,” Kit replied, and was about to reach for the door handle, when she heard a strange noise. “Do… do you hear a ticking sound?” She frowned. “I think it’s under your seat!”

“I don’t think so, I think it’s under yours!”

The ticking got louder, and Kit started to panic- this was what had happened to her parents, a car bomb they hadn’t been able to escape on time, one she herself had only survived by sheer luck.

“Get out!” she screamed. “Get me out, get me out, get me out!” She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to see the explosion that was about to happen, unable to see anything but the one that had already happened. (Or was due to happen in a few months, depending on your point of view.)

“Kit!” Danny called, shaking her out of her panic. “Kit, Kit, it’s alright!” He held up a bundle of what appeared to be brown paper tubes, attached to an alarm clock with tape. “See, they’re not real! There’s a note, too, says it was only meant to frighten me- it bloody worked, too, I thought we were both goners!”

Kit started to laugh, relieved that they’d survived- but it didn’t take long for her laughter to dissolve into tears, as her emotions overwhelmed her. They’d come so close… if the explosives had been real… She didn’t want to think about it, but she couldn’t help it.

“They were just letting you know that they could get to you, at any time, and any place,” Olaf said, once they were all safely back in the incident room and everyone had been brought up to speed on what had happened.

“You alright, ma’am?” Bea asked, sitting beside Kit and offering her a cup of tea, which she accepted gratefully.

“So, what does this new note say?” Georgie asked. Olaf handed it to her, and she read it aloud. “On Wedding Day, you die.” She frowned. “Should we get Special Branch involved now?”

“No, we bloody well shouldn’t! This is my patch, my crime, and my result!” Olaf snapped.

“You know what, I’ve changed my mind- I do want police protection,” Danny cut in. They all looked at him. “I’m at risk, I’m frightened, I need protection!”

“I could do it!” Bea volunteered.

“I think we should let the guv decide that one,” Bert countered.

“Exactly, Bert. Snicket, if you reckon you could manage it without fainting again, then I’ll assign you to the job.”

“I’m needed here, though!” Kit protested.

“Look at the state of you- you’re of no use to us here. If you wanna make yourself useful, you can stay with Mr. Moore here, at least until you’ve perked up a bit.”

Sensing that she wasn’t wanted in the incident room, Kit decided to take the hint and leave with Danny. Fortunately, these events had not put a damper on their dinner plans, and before long, they were seated in an Italian restaurant that was slightly more upmarket than Lorenzo’s, drinking wine and eating very fancy dishes with names neither of them could pronounce.

“You’re still trembling,” Danny observed.

“Well, we did nearly die- I think I’m allowed to tremble.” Of course, Kit wasn’t entirely sure if she _could_ die in this world- even so, she didn't really want to test the theory out. “Weren’t you frightened today? I mean, you could’ve died too.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Danny replied, with a smile. “I’m immortal.”

“Oh, really? Well, so am I!”

“In that case, is there anything you really wanna do tonight?”

“Well,” Kit began, thinking about it for a moment. “I would really like to see if you could surprise me. I would love to know if that’s possible.”

He took them to a nightclub- the Blitz, which was popular with members of the New Romantics movement.

“This is amazing!” Kit cried, as she hung up her coat on one of the racks near the entrance.

“You dance?” Danny asked, pulling her through the crowds of mostly young people, through a sea of tartan checks, sequins and elaborately dyed and spiked hairstyles.

“No!” Kit said, shaking her head frantically.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you!” Danny shouted, bringing her forward into the club properly.

They bumped into a young couple- a man wearing a white jacket and a woman with spiked up black hair and a sequinned red skirt. The man turned around, and Kit realised that it was Bert, wearing contact lenses and a lot of black eyeliner and matching lipstick.

“Bert!” she exclaimed. “What’s happened to you?!”

“Bea!” Bert replied, pointing to his companion. Sure enough, Kit recognised the young woman with the spiked up black hair as WPC Baudelaire, who gave her a bright smile and friendly wave, before going back to dancing. “Don’t tell anyone at work about this, ma’am!” he said.

“What?” Kit asked, leaning in to hear him better over the noise.

“I’ll never hear the end of it!” he added.

“I can’t hear you, Bert!”  
  
“Don’t say anything at work about this! I’d never hear the end of it!”

Kit and Danny moved away from the couple, letting them get on with their night.

“I’m gonna go get a drink!” Kit called over the noise, already making her way over to the bar.

As she waited to be served, a movement over on the stage caught her eye. She didn’t know what band was supposed to be playing tonight, though she’d caught a bit of the song they were singing- something about fading to grey. It didn’t matter what the song was- not really. Kit watched the singer for a second, then looked at the bar again, trying to catch the attention of one of the waiters. When she looked over again, the singer had disappeared- in his place, there was another man in a white clown costume. Kit had seen that same clown a couple times since she had arrived in 1981- in her dreams, out of the corner of her eye, on her TV screen the night of Gregor Anwhistle’s arrest, talking in her daughter’s voice. He looked a little like David Bowie, and a little like someone else she knew, but not really like either.

“Hurry up, Kit,” he said, looking straight at her. No longer speaking in Beatrice’s voice. “We are waiting for you, Kit.”

Then he disappeared. Kit looked around frantically, ignoring the waiter who had finally noticed her. She saw a flash of white moving in the direction of the bathrooms, and followed it before she could think better of it.

“Let me through!” she shouted, shoving her way through the crowds. “I’m a police officer!” She threw open the bathroom door. There was nobody there. “Where are you?” she shouted, positive that the clown had gone this way. “What do you want?”

“What’s going on?” asked a young woman, who emerged from one of the stalls wearing a white clown costume.

“No-nothing, I… I thought you were someone else.”

The woman gave her a strange look, but didn’t say anything. Kit closed her eyes and sighed, unable to believe she’d actually done something quite so stupid.

Olaf

Meanwhile, back at the station, Olaf and Georgie were still no closer to working out what was going on with the London Liberation Front, or their bomb threats. They were the last two detectives in the incident room, and it was getting late- past time to call it a day and head to Lorry’s for dinner.

“So, what have we got?” Olaf asked, perching on Bert’s empty desk. “A dog in assorted pieces, and a poxy note from a group that doesn’t even seem to exist.” He shook his head. “It’s not much, is it?”

“We do have the results from the explosives, guv,” Georgie said, holding up one of the sheets of paper she was looking through.

“We’ve got a potential major incident here, and everyone’s gone AWOL,” he grumbled. “Where’s Bert?”

“Some sort of stomach bug, apparently,” Georgie replied. “Bloody convenient timing for it,” she added, shaking her head. “And I don’t even wanna know what Snicket’s getting up to right now.”

“Well, never mind them right now. What do the results say?”

“World War Two dynamite, they reckon- apparently it’s been gathering dust for forty years.” She sighed, taking off her glasses so she could rub her eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she continued, once she’d put them back on. “Who’d hang on to explosives for forty years, then use them to blow up a dog?”

“If I knew the answer to that, Gina, we wouldn’t need to be here right now.” Olaf sighed, and shook his head. “No, whoever it is, we haven’t heard the end of it. And as for Danny Moore, he might be a Thatcherite twat with more than questionable morals, but it’s still our job to protect the bastard.”

“From what? The dynamite or Snicket?” Georgie asked, with a small laugh.

“She might be a couple sandwiches short of a picnic, Georgie, but she’s still your superior officer, don’t you forget it!”

“I know, guv. It’s just weird- in so many ways, she’s just like Jacques- and in so many other ways, they’re really nothing alike. Never mind that, though- I’ll focus on the dynamite for now.”

“No, no, we can worry about that tomorrow. You get yourself home, Georgie, get some rest. We’ll see if we can nail these bastards in the morning- whoever they are.”

They bid each other goodnight, and left the incident room.

Kit

Back at the club, Kit had recovered from her freak out- thanks in no small part to the glasses of wine she’d consumed since then- and the crowds of dancers had thinned a little.

“A lot of people have clown phobias, don’t worry about it,” Danny assured her. They were slow dancing now, and Kit was actually starting to enjoy herself.

“Thank you,” she said, “for a wonderful evening.” She paused, thinking it over. “Or maybe it was a micro second. I think it was- I hope it was. Thank you, then, for a wonderful micro second.”

“Kit?”

“Yes?”

“You talk too much.”

Kit smiled, and closed her eyes. She regretted it almost instantly, as the image of the clown she’d seen earlier flashed across her mind, followed by a repeat of the same flashback she’d had the other day, of her mother leaving her alone at school.

“Make sure she concentrates…” her mother had said. “She’s easily distracted.”

Kit’s eyes snapped open, and zoned in on a poster behind them. A poster that used the exact same weird O’s Bertrand hadn’t been able to place yesterday, bearing a slogan that Kit had last seen on a t-shirt belonging to Stewart Mitchum, the son of Harvey Mitchum, the pub landlord they’d interviewed yesterday.

“Oh my God,” Kit muttered. It felt like the room was starting to spin around her. “We’re moving,” she said, before she could stop herself. “Can’t you feel it?”

“Look, you’ve just had a bit to drink, why don’t we go outside and get some air?” Danny suggested.

“No, no,” Kit replied, shaking her head and stepping away from him. “No, I’ve been distracted, but I’m alright now.” She started to walk out of the club.

“Kit, where are you going?” Danny called after her.

“I’m going to a birthday party,” she replied.

* * *

“It makes perfect sense,” Kit said. She’d been lucky enough to catch Olaf just before he’d left the station for the night, and had been trying to explain her theory to him for the last five minutes. “He hero worships his father, he looks up to him, sees him humiliated by having to sell his pub, his home, his identity. Danny Moore is the developer. It all fits, don’t you see?”

“Well, you've changed your tune,” Olaf said, frowning at her. “Last time I saw you, you were just doing a pretty passable impression of a useless bimbo.”

“I was distracted. I am not any more. Bring him in before he kills.”

“I don't buy it.”

“Look, I know that I'm right, okay? I know his profile.”

“So where exactly does the little squirt get his dynamite from?” he asked, rolling his eyes. “Two dabs of sherbet and some nitroglycerin? Please!”

“I don't know all the details yet, but I know that I'm right about this.”

“Why should I believe you? You’ve been acting like a right flake since this case started!”

“If I’m wrong,” she said, “I’ll owe you a fiver. If I’m right, you’ll owe me. Does that sound fair?” He shrugged.

“Sounds like a deal, Snicket.”

With that cleared up, they phoned Georgie and Bert, rounded up all the officers who were on night duty, and headed straight to The Finish.

“Right, let’s all stay very calm,” Kit said, as they entered the Mitchums’ flat.

“Innocent men don’t run, son,” Olaf snapped, catching Stewart by the arm before he could flee from the flat and run down the stairs.

“Let him go!” Mrs. Mitchum shouted. “Harvey, stop him!”

“Stewart Mitchum, we’re arresting you for the attempted murder of Daniel Moore,” Kit explained. “You do not have to say-”

“That’s not how it goes!” Olaf snapped, cutting her off.

“Look, he might hate Daniel Moore, we all do!” Mr. Mitchum protested. “But he’s not capable of murder, just look at him!” Admittedly, it was difficult to believe that the pudgy boy in Star Wars pyjamas was capable of violence, but Kit was fully aware that there was more to being a killer than physical appearance. “You’re a coward, Dupin- if you wanna have a go at someone, come and have a go at me!” He held a baseball bat aloft.

“Put that down, Mr. Mitchum,” Kit said, trying to sound calm and authoritative, and definitely not like she was thinking of all the synonyms for “bat” that her little brother would be able to come up with if he were here right now.

Kit brought Stewart down the stairs, while Olaf dragged Mr. Mitchum behind them. They reached the downstairs area of the pub, where Georgie, Bert and the night shift officers had entered.

“Are you wearing make-up?” Kit overheard Georgie ask, as it seemed that Bert had come here straight from Blitz, and hadn’t had time to change- or wash all the eyeliner off.

“Course not,” he replied, though he wiped under one eye, as if to wipe a last tell-tale smudge away, pulled his glasses from his pocket and popped them back on. “What’s going on?” he asked, gesturing to Mitchum, who’d now been pushed against the bar while Olaf secured the handcuffs around his wrists.

“You didn’t say you were gonna do this!” Georgie protested, looking at the man.

“When you become my mother, Gina, I promise I’ll let you know,” Olaf snapped, before looking at Bert. “Bert, turn this place upside down.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Dynamite,” Olaf said simply. Bert grinned.

“Dynamite? Ace!” He left to go search the building for explosives.

“There’s no dynamite in this house, you bloody idiots!” Mitchum snapped. Olaf groaned, and shoved him against the bar again.

“I’m so sorry, I have no idea where this stuff is coming from!” Kit said, though nobody paid her any mind.

“Stop this, let them go!” Mrs. Mitchum cried, though it was no use.

“Right, let’s get them down to the station- I want this done and dusted,” Olaf said, leading Mitchum from the pub. Kit brought Stewart, and they all went back to Fenchurch.

* * *

Once they got back to the station, the Mitchums were placed into holding cells, and Kit and Olaf went over their strategies for the interrogations.

“I say we let Harvey go,” Kit said. “If we can get rid of the father, we can isolate the son.”

“You’re pretty confident about this, aren’t you?” Olaf replied. “What if you’re wrong, and the bomber’s still out there?”

“I’m not, and he’s not,” Kit said, with more confidence than she truly felt. Olaf nodded.

“Right then- we let the old man go. I’m gonna go squeeze his son’s zits until I hit his nervous system.”

“Hang on,” Kit said, putting a hand up to stop him. “Let me talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a frightened, confused kid, and I’m an expert.”

“The only thing you seem to be an expert at, Kit-Kat, is being a bloody pain in the neck,” Olaf countered. “I’ve a good mind to send the little squirt to Special Branch, save us all the bother.”

“We need to get him a lawyer,” Kit said firmly. “I want this case to stick- might I suggest we use Evelyn Snicket?”

“Listen, Bolly, this is already a right mess of a case. Getting your family involved is not gonna make it any better.” Kit frowned at him. “What?” he asked, with a shrug. “It’s hardly a common name, is it? I just assumed all Snickets were related.”

“Yeah,” Kit said, thinking this might come in handy later, if she were going to stop the bombing. “She’s my third cousin, four times removed- or possibly my fourth cousin, three times removed, I can never remember which.”

“So, what you’re saying is, she’s removed.”

* * *

Finally, Kit was able to return to her flat. Before she went to bed, though, she dug around in the drawers and cupboards until she found a blank brown notebook another detective must’ve left behind, and wrote down everything she had learned that day about her parents and their work, as well as everything that seemed relevant about their particular case. She already had her tape recordings to help her catalogue everything about this strange world, but she wanted something else, too- and keeping a small commonplace notebook to record information in was something she and her brothers had done when they were children. Kit had always had a brown one, Jacques had a dark green one, and Lemony had a pale yellow one.

She felt better once she’d written everything down, though her mind still found itself coming back to her memory of being left alone at school, her mother’s words playing in her head all over again.

“Make sure she concentrates… she’s easily distracted.”

“I was once,” Kit said, putting the notebook away and getting into bed. “But I’m not any more.” Then she switched off the light, and finally went to sleep.


	7. Chapter Six: In Which Kit Meets Her Mother

Chapter Six: In Which Kit Meets Her Mother

Georgina

“New Romantics?” Georgie scoffed, staring at her best friend in confusion and disgust. It was the day after the pub raid, and she had finally found out what Bert had been doing last night. “I’ve not heard anything that ridiculous in a long time- tell me you didn’t seriously go there.”

“Well, I had my back against the wall, obviously,” Bert replied, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You’ll never guess who else was there- DI Snicket!”

“You’re joking!” Georgie smiled. “I mean, I knew she was a bit of a weirdo, but I never would’ve guessed that she’d do something like that.”

“Who are we talking about?” Bea asked, coming up to Bert’s desk. “You never said if you enjoyed last night or not.”

“It was great, I had a lot of fun,” Bert replied. Georgie shook her head.

“He’s just spent the last two minutes saying it was full of saddos and freaks!”

“Did you really say that?” Bea asked, glaring down at Bert. “Some of those saddos and freaks are my best mates!” She sighed, and looked over at Georgie. “Did he tell you that he was wearing eyeliner?”

“I’ve got work to do,” Bert muttered, looking down at his desk.

Kit

“ _We are all prostitutes- everyone has their price, and you too will learn to live the lie,”_ Kit read aloud from the lyrics she’d printed out.

“I’m sure Barry Manilow’s covered that one,” Olaf muttered, beside her.

“Is that what you believe, Stewart?” Kit asked.

“I just like the music, that’s all,” Stewart replied. Olaf frowned, and pressed a button on the cassette player beside him. Immediately, Stewart started tapping his fingers on the table in time to the music, and tapping his feet on the floor.

“I think it’s a little more than that, son,” he said, switching the music off. “Thing is, all the letters in this warning note can be traced to publications found in your home.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“D’you want a smoke?” Olaf asked, offering him the ashtray.

“The working classes are enslaved by the tobacco industry,” Stewart replied, pushing it back towards him.

“Based on the evidence, Stewart, we think you were planning on murdering Daniel Moore.”

“Prove it!” Stewart snapped.

“The correct answer is, _no I wasn’t!”_ Olaf snapped. “You know what, I have just about had it up to here with you, Stewart- you’d better start giving us answers right now, do you understand?”

“Come on, Stewart- just tell us the truth. If you can prove that you had nothing to do with this, then we can forget the whole thing.”

“Can I speak to my solicitor, please?” Stewart asked.

“Of course,” Kit said. “Wait here, we’ll bring her in.” Standing up, she and Olaf left the room, leaving a uniformed PC to stay with Stewart.

* * *

“You know, I’d have thought a kid like that would be singing like a canary by now,” Olaf muttered.

“You’re not going to get anywhere by threatening him,” Kit countered.

“D’you think he’s got any associates out there?”

“No, he won’t have any- he’s a loner, I’m sure of it.”

“We need to know for certain, Bolls- we can’t take any chances, not if there might be more explosives out there.”

“I know that- but we have to handle this situation carefully. If you’re too harsh, it could ruin this whole- Mum?”

The door at the other end of the corridor had opened up, and a woman stood in the doorway. She wore a dark blue blazer and matching pencil skirt, and had short, greying dark brown hair. Kit recognised her straight away, though she had not seen her in years.

“What was that?” she asked.  
  
“Er, nothing, it was nothing.”

“To what do we owe the pleasure of this unpleasant visit, Mrs. Snicket?” Olaf asked.

“Someone phoned my office- I’m here to represent Stewart Mitchum.”

“This just gets better and better,” Olaf muttered.

“It’s amazing to meet you, Evelyn… er, I mean, Mrs. Snicket. I’ve… I’ve admired your work, and-”

“Are you trying to be funny?” Mother asked, shaking her head.

“No, no, of course not,” Kit said.

“Well, we’ll see who’s laughing when I’m finished here- I want to see my client.”

Olaf

This was not looking good, thought Olaf as Evelyn Snicket walked into the interview room. Mitchum wasn’t talking, so they didn’t know if he was the bomber, the wedding was tomorrow and they were still no closer to solving the case, and now Evelyn bloody Snicket was in his station.

“Is your whole family on some kind of mission to drive me to an early retirement?” he grumbled.

“I’m going in there,” Kit said, reaching for the door handle.

“Hold your horses, Bolly,” Olaf replied. “You don’t walk into an interview room with that woman unless you have a confession written in the suspect’s own blood!”

“We knew he did it!” Kit insisted.

“We _think_ we know!” He shook his head. “Look, I can’t believe I am about to say this, but we need evidence!”

“We have evidence! The cut-out letters, Danny Moore being class enemy number one, him taking over the pub-”

“That’s all circumstantial! If that’s all we have to work with, she will have our heads on spikes above the Old Bailey!”

“I am going in there with her!”

She went to open the door again, which was when Bert came up to them carrying a plastic bag.

“Guv,” he said, handing Olaf the bag. “We took the floorboards up in the pub, look what we found.”

Inside the bag were several sticks of dynamite. Olaf held it open slightly so that Kit could see what was inside it.

“You really think you can take on Evelyn Snicket?” he asked, giving the bag a slight shake. “You might need some of this, then.”

* * *

“Where did the dynamite come from, Stewart?” Kit asked. She and Olaf were now sitting across from Stewart and Evelyn, and while this interview wasn’t going _terribly_ so far, it also wasn’t going great, either.

“I don’t know,” Stewart replied.

“If we are going to help each other out here, then you need to be completely honest with me.”

“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Evelyn asked. “He said he doesn’t know.”

“Love- Fifteen,” Olaf muttered.

Now the interview was starting to turn into the disaster he’d been expecting. Evelyn seemed to know nothing about Kit, which was a bit weird since they were cousins- but then again, that was hardly the weirdest thing he’d learned about the Snicket family at this point.

“Please, let’s not play this game,” Kit said.

“This is not a game, Detective Inspector Snicket,” Evelyn replied.

“Kit. Please, just call me Kit.”

“Detective Inspector Snicket, charge him or release him, it is really that simple.”

“Love-Thirty,” Olaf muttered, crossing out the score he had written on his notepad and updating it.

“Your evidence is at best circumstantial, and at worst it is flat out malicious. Just because his family made a stance which happened to inconvenience you-”

“I’m sorry, do you think _dynamite_ is circumstantial?” Kit asked.

“When it is so conveniently discovered by members of the Metropolitan Police, then yes I do.”

“Look, I am trying to help your client here, can we please stop these games and deal with the task at hand?”

“You know what I think?” Evelyn asked.

“I’m sure you’ll tell me no matter how I answer that question.”

“I think that you’ve been put under pressure by your superior officers to put the blame for these crimes onto some innocent, weak member of society, so you can tell them that all will be well for the royal wedding.”

“So you really think that we’d let an innocent man go down, and leave a potential killer free to walk the streets?”

“The police, immoral? Tell me it’s not so!” Evelyn countered. “Now, I really don’t know if you are spectacularly naïve or spectacularly stupid- although judging by your place of employment, I would have to assume the latter.”

“Would you?” Kit asked. “You know what I think? I think you are a rude bitch. Now, maybe you’ll get him off-”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Olaf muttered, before he could stop himself.

“Will you shut up?!” snapped both Kit and Evelyn.

“As I was saying,” Kit continued. “You may get him off, and maybe he will repay you by blowing you to kingdom come.”

“What a very strange thing to say,” Evelyn replied. “Maybe we should reconvene this interview when you are a little less excited. Charge him, or release him, it’s that simple.”

“Consider him charged, then,” Kit said. Evelyn nodded, putting her folders back into her bag.

“I’ll look forward to seeing you in court, then,” she said, and left the interview room.

“Right then,” Olaf said, once she was gone. “Maybe we should pop along and do some profiling.”

“Thanks for your support,” Kit replied, then she walked out of the room.

Kit

Kit sighed, and pushed open the door of the station. Whatever she had been expecting her first meeting with her mother to be like, she definitely hadn’t been expecting it to go as badly as it had. While her mother hadn’t realised who she was- which, in fairness, she had expected- Kit had thought that they might at least be able to get along a bit more easily than they had.

That being said, she was surprised to find, on opening the door and stepping out into the cool air, she found her mother waiting just outside.

“I thought you’d have left,” she admitted.

“I was waiting for you,” Mother explained. “You look like you could do with a drink.”

“I’d like that, thank you.”

They went across the street to Lorry’s, and ordered a bottle of red wine to share between them. Kit smiled- this was one of the many, many things she had never got to do with her mother, and she supposed it was one of the few advantages to being in her current predicament.

“I’m sorry if I was a bit hard on you,” Mother said after a minute. “Truth be told, I hadn’t even known I had a cousin named Kit, never mind one who lives so close by.”

“Snickets take care of their own,” Kit replied. “Though I suppose we have to be aware of each other’s existence in order to truly do that.”

“That’s what I tell my children,” Mother said. “But, that isn’t important right now. The point is, I shouldn’t have been quite so hard on you earlier, and I apologise. The last thing I want to do is embarrass a fellow female in a male profession- especially one who’s family. You know, you’re the only female DI in the division?”

“I know,” Kit replied. “Lucky me, eh?”

“I know there must be a lot of pressure on a woman to become like a man in your position- either join the club or get isolated and abused.”

“Well, people like you fought the fight so that people like me don't have to.”

“The Metropolitan Police presents a very united front to people like me. _Hatred,_ I think, is the word.”

“We're on the same side, can't we work together?” Kit asked. She wanted to at least be able to work alongside her mother, even just for the short time they would both be in this world together.

“Would you really like to help me, DI Snicket?”

“Call me Kit, please,” Kit said. “I would love to help you.”

“That’s my daughter’s name, you know- only we call her Kitty. It must be a family name.”

“What’s Kitty like?”

“Oh, she’s bright as a penny.”

“I bet she adores you.”

“Not when I ask her to tidy her room, she doesn’t.”

“Could I see her?” Kit asked. “Do you have a photo or something?”

“Yeah, I should have one,” Mother replied, reaching into her handbag. She produced two photos- a photo of a little girl with light brown hair and a school uniform on, the other of that same little girl standing on the right-hand side of an even smaller boy with dark hair, another boy the same age as the girl standing on the toddler’s other side. She handed Kit the school photo- though if she’d had the choice, Kit would’ve preferred the one with her brothers. “Sorry, my perfume leaked all over it- I ought to get a new one.”

“She looks quite sad,” Kit observed, looking at the photo of her twelve-year-old self. “Where is she now?”

“You know what would really help me, Kit, would be if we could become friends. We could talk sometimes, and you could tell me about things that go on at work.”

“What sort of things?” Kit asked, though she had a feeling she knew exactly what her mother was referring to.

“Things that should be in the public domain, and not in a dark police cell.”

“Okay, let me get this straight. You want me to spy on my colleagues and report my findings back to you?”

“I want you to do what you know is right.”

“No,” Kit said, shaking her head fiercely. “No, not even in death. Not even to please you.”

“You were the one preaching about Snickets taking care of their own,” Mother pointed out. “Or does that only apply to things that don’t inconvenience you?”

“Could… could we meet again? I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here.”

“No, I don’t think we can. You know what’s worse than women being refused power, Detective Inspector? It’s women fighting to get the keys to the kingdom, and then behaving like men.”

“Please, just get to know me! I might even be able to save your life!”

“I don’t want to get to know you. I’m glad my children have never met you- if even one of them grew up to be like you, I would be thoroughly ashamed of them.” And with that, she left the restaurant.

Kit sighed, and went straight upstairs to her flat. She needed a distraction, anything that could distract her from the shit-show that this afternoon had turned into. Changing out of her grey dress into a white blouse and beige skirt, she put on her furry white coat, a pair of dangly earrings and her red heels, and went to see Daniel Moore.

“Now, obviously I wouldn't dream of doing this in real life,” she said to herself as she waited for the elevator to reach Danny’s floor. “I don’t shag Thatcherite businessmen, no matter how cute they are. All I’m doing is pissing off that part of the Id that spewed up my mother.” She smiled, adding another coat of lipstick. “And nobody will know but me!”

At that moment, the doors to the elevator swung open, revealing Danny lying back on the couch right across from the elevator- with a blonde woman in a blue silk dress on top of him. Frantically, Kit pressed the button to close the door, but the doors kept sliding open and closed before finally shutting properly, and Kit didn’t get away before Danny noticed her, and they were both aware just how badly Kit had misread the situation between them.

Olaf

Olaf had been trying to enjoy his dinner when Kit stumbled into Lorry’s restaurant. He was trying one of Lorry’s more tame pizza-based experiments, with pineapple, salmon and mushrooms, and regretting the decisions that had brought him here- the least Kit could’ve done was leave him to regret those decisions in peace, but here they were.

“DI Snickerdoodle, you appear to be drunk, in control of a handbag and dressed like a tart again.”

“Oh, piss off, you caterpillar-browed arsehole.”

“You wound me, Snicket,” he replied. “Lorry, could we get another bottle of your Chianti over here?”

“No, no, I don’t want a drink, I’m going upstairs.”

“Oh, and a bottle of your ridiculously over-priced fizzy water.”

“Certainly, Mr. Dupin,” Lorry replied.

“Sit,” Olaf said, pointing to the chair across from him. Kit pulled it out, went to sit down, and promptly fell off it and onto the ground.

* * *

“I can’t believe this,” Kit muttered. By now, she was back in her chair, one elbow resting on the table, her head resting in her hand. “Even in my own bloody fantasy, my mother is ashamed of me.”

“Would you like to take some advice from the Count?” Olaf asked. Clearly, Kit was not having a great day, which may explain why she was talking even more crazy than usual.

“Not really,” she said.

“Well, you’re gonna get it anyway,” he replied. “When the rest of humanity finds themselves in the dung heap, misery lapping at their throats and threatening to drown them, the rat of despair gnawing away at their genitals…”

“Yeah, alright!” Kit snapped, then reached for the wine bottle. “I’m gonna have some more wine.”

“No, you’re not,” Olaf replied, taking the bottle and setting it out of reach. “Listen, you and me, Bolly, we are police officers. We can drive fast cars, we can shout at people- in short, we can do something, make a difference in this miserable world.”

“Keep fighting, don’t get distracted.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Yes!” Kit said, slapping her hand down on the table.

“Careful there, Bolls- that Formica was hewn from the hills above Florence.” At least, that was what Lorry had claimed once, which meant it probably wasn’t to be believed.

“Thank you,” she said. When he frowned at her in confusion, she elaborated. “I was lost, but now I am found.”

“Kenny Rogers?” he guessed.

“Something like that, probably,” she replied.

“Hey!” Lorry called, holding up a flaming frying pan. “Can I offer you deserts, Signor Dupin?”

“It’s _desserts,_ Lorry, how many bloody times?! The _desert_ is where Montgomery gave your lot a well-deserved hiding during the war!” Speaking of the war… a photo caught his eye just then, of a group of Italian soldiers surrounded by boxes of dynamite. _Hitler couldn’t drive my dad out of this pub..._ That’s what Harvey Mitchum had said. Finishing the last of his wine, Olaf stood up.

“Where are you off to?” Kit asked.

“There’s work to do, Bolly- I think I need to start at The Finish.”


	8. Chapter Seven: In Which The Royal Wedding Finally Takes Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (This summary is mainly for the benefit of any readers who are affected by the themes of suicide which are present in this chapter, but who still want to know what happens in the chapter. Feel free to ignore this summary if this doesn't apply to you. Likewise, if you need a more detailed summary, I can provide that too if asked.)
> 
> As Kit tries to get the truth out of Stewart, Olaf reveals his own theory regarding the identity of the bomber, finally exposing him and resolving the case. Meanwhile, the Royal Wedding goes off without a hitch, and the team are able to celebrate the happy occasion- though the celebrations are still marred by tragedy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: A HUGE trigger warning for this chapter, as it deals with themes of suicide- specifically suicide bombers. If this is something that you know will make you uncomfortable, then I not only permit you to skip this chapter as the author of this fic, I encourage you to do so if it will protect your mental health. A summary has been included with this chapter, so you can get the general jist of what happens.

Chapter Seven: In Which The Royal Wedding Finally Takes Place

Kit

“Alright, Stewart, I am going to put every card I have on the table,” Kit said. It was the day of the Royal Wedding. They were almost out of time, and Kit knew that she had to get a confession from Stewart Mitchum now, before it was too late. “You tried to intimidate Mr. Moore with the fake car bomb, then you threatened his life.”

“No, I didn’t!” Stewart protested. “I want to see my solicitor.”

“Look, you were angry at Mr Moore because he was trying to hurt your family, your dad, and you struck out. A jury will understand that- your wonderful lawyer will make sure that they do. I know what it's like to adore a parent, Stewart. A powerful, dominating, exciting parent who, well, sometimes doesn't give you as much attention as you think you might be due.”

“You know nothing about me,” Stewart said.

“Maybe not- but I have seen where this ends, Stewart. Boys who haven't even been born yet, so full of hate that they strap bombs to themselves to obliterate innocent people.”

“Not even the IRA would do something like that,” Stewart replied. Kit sighed.

“Do you remember when I said that it was futile to fight?” she asked. “Well, I was wrong, and you were right. It’s never futile to fight, Stewart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am fighting for my life,” she explained, not caring any more whether or not she was making sense. It had been a long couple of days, and she was tired of trying to make any sense. “I am fighting to go home and see my little girl again.”

“You’re completely barking!” Stewart exclaimed. Kit smiled.

“Maybe I am- maybe I’m completely crazy. Regardless, don’t be driven by hate, Stewart- be driven by love.”

Just then, the door opened, and Olaf came in, with Harvey Mitchum in tow.

“Dad?” Stewart asked, frowning at his father.

“I’m sorry, DI Snicket,” Olaf said. “I didn’t realise you were interviewing in here.”

“What have you brought him in for?” Kit asked.

“Didn’t I tell you? He’s our bomber!”

“You’re insane, Dupin!” Mitchum snapped. “I know nothing about any of this!”

“I did it,” Stewart spoke up. They all turned to look at him. “I did it, I’m the bomber. I was trying to scare Moore away- I wanted you to be proud of me, Dad.”

“No, Stewart,” Mitchum said, shaking his head at his son.

“I did it,” Stewart repeated. “I did it, I’m sorry.”

“Did anybody help you, Stewart?” Kit asked, keeping her voice level and calm.

“No, nobody helped me, I did it on my own,” Stewart replied.

“Don’t say another word,” Mitchum said. “Not until the lawyer gets here.”

Bertrand

The wedding was finally here, and with the bombing case apparently resolved, most of the team had gathered round a small television set in the incident room to watch the ceremony.

“ _Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made,”_ the reporter on the TV said.

“Nobody does this better than us,” Georgie said. “Nobody.” She sniffed, prompting a couple of the other detectives to look at her.

“Are you crying, Georgie?” Fernald asked. Bert turned to look at her, and sure enough, her eyes were a little more shiny than usual behind her glasses.

“Course not!” she replied, running a finger under her eyes.

“ _But fairy tales usually end at this point,”_ the reporter continued, “ _with the simple phrase, they lived happily ever after.”_

“Isn’t she lovely?” Bea said, looking at the new Princess. “That’s Emanuel, you know.”

“Yeah, it’s a lovely dress,” Bert replied. He was still trying to make up for the whole _freaks and saddos_ incident from yesterday, and thought this might help. Bea shook her head at him.

“Don’t pretend you’ve got a soft side,” she said, looking back at the screen.

“It’s a bit wrinkled,” Georgie observed.

“It’s meant to be wrinkled,” Bert replied.

“Twat,” she muttered. Just then, the guv, DI Snicket, Stewart Mitchum and Harvey Mitchum came into the incident room.

“Have they tied the royal knot yet?”

“Not yet, guv,” Georgie replied. “They’re almost there, though.”

“Spotty, useless, anarchic twat nil, Royal Family and Olaf Dupin, one.”

“Go easy on him,” Kit said.

“Do you think he’ll make a good king?” Fernald asked, drawing everyone’s attention back to the TV.

“It worries me that he’s Welsh,” Bert said. They all turned to look at him. “No offence, Fernald, I’m not a racialist.”

“No, you’re just an idiot,” Georgie muttered, cuffing him on the head.

Olaf

It was all going just a little too well, Olaf thought, which probably explained why, in that moment, Evelyn Snicket and Mimi Mitchum came into the incident room.

“Stewart, what have you done?” Mimi asked, looking between her son and her husband.

“I want this officer removed from the case,” Evelyn said, pointing at Kit. “She’s not competent.”

“Oh, is that right?” Kit asked, rolling her eyes. “Is that right? Well, at least I’m not out trying to score cheap points off coppers, while my only daughter is stuck at school on her own for the Royal Wedding- while her brothers get to watch it at home, might I add!”

“How dare you speak to me like that!” Evelyn asked. “I don’t care if we’re cousins, how I raise my children is my business, not yours!”

“No! You know, I’ve felt guilty about that all my life, wanting to know what I could’ve possibly done to warrant you leaving me and not them. But I won’t feel guilty about that any more- she’s your daughter, she deserves bloody better than that!”

“Ladies, ladies, can we deal with this before we get to the mud-wrestling?” Olaf asked, holding his hands up.

“Shut up!” both Snicket cousins said together.

Olaf sighed, and picked up the plastic bag- the same one that had contained the dynamite from the Mitchums’ flat- that he’d set on Bert’s desk until he’d need it to prove his theory correct. It seemed that moment had arrived.

“Mrs. Mitchum,” he said, tossing the bag over to her. “Catch!”

“Get down!” Harvey cried, falling to the floor and ducking under a chair.

“Garibaldis?” Mimi asked, pulling one of the biscuits from the bag. “It’s just a bag of Garibaldis!”

“You were expecting these, were you, Private Mitchum?” Olaf asked, carefully removing the explosives from Bert’s desk drawer. “You’re nicked.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Kit said.

“He served in the Army in North Africa, blowing up sunburnt Germans,” he explained. “He knows his way around a set of explosives. You’re the bomber, aren’t you? You bitter old bastard.”

“Hey, could you keep the noise down over there, please?” Bert called.

With the case finally resolved, Olaf decided to go into his office to get some Scotch, so that he could start celebrating the Royal Wedding which was now finally able to go on without any worries about bomb threats or any other major incidents. Kit was perched on his desk, waving her pen absent-mindedly.

“I was absolutely convinced it was Stewart,” she said. “Classic father worship, hero envy, inadequate, angry, bright- I’d have put money on him being the bomber.”

“Nah, not in a million years,” he replied, pouring her a glass of Scotch. “And as for Daddy Mitchum, well, he’s a coward- all talk and no trousers.” He handed her one of the drinks, and they clinked their glasses together. “It looks like your boyfriend’s invited us to a bit of a do- shall we pop along?”

Kit

Danny had invited them to a street party not far from the station, which was already in full swing by the time they got there. It was a typically British street party, with Union Jack flags and bunting everywhere. Kit had gotten into the spirit with her blue jumper, white jacket, and a red necklace with red sunglasses. When she got there, Danny was chatting up a blonde woman in a red dress- and Kit briefly wondered if she was the same woman Danny had been with when she came over to his flat, then decided that she didn’t care.

“That’s the trouble being posh,” Olaf said, following her gaze. “There’s always somebody posher.”

Once everybody was seated, Danny stood up on a small platform and grabbed a microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention, please?” he shouted. “I just wanna say a few words! Now, I know that we haven’t always seen eye to eye on the development of this area, but I want you all to know, that you and I are the same- we have the same blood running in out veins!”

As he continued his speech, Kit looked around the assembled crowds, and was surprised to see that Mimi and Stewart Mitchum had joined the party.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

“Getting on with their lives,” Olaf replied.

Stewart walked over to them, and Kit smiled at him. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I think it took a lot of courage to come here this evening.”

“I thought about what you said, and you were right. Everybody must fight,” Stewart replied. Kit frowned, before turning her attention back to Danny’s speech.

“Everyone here will be given a cash sum to start a new life in a new place!” he continued. “And every man here will have a job in my company, if that’s what they want!” The crowds cheered. “I don't want braying public schoolboys on the floor, I want barrow boys, and wide boys! I want our street wisdom, our ducking and diving, our East End blood. You know, one day this place will have all the romance of Venice and the commercial power of New York- and I give you my word, we'll make a few quid on the way!”

“He’s a smooth operator,” Olaf admitted. “I’ll give him that much.”

“The future is bright, my friends!” Danny continued, raising a glass with his free hand. “I give you the Royal Couple. God Save The Queen!” he finished, to more applause and cheering.

Once the speech was over, and people had gone back to chatting over their lemonade and sausage rolls, Danny approached Kit, offering her a drink.

“I kept the best stuff back,” he explained.

“That was a pretty speech,” she replied.

“I meant every word.” He smiled, and Kit wondered what she’d seen in him in the first place. “Listen, if you ever get bored of working for an oaf like Dupin, then there’s a job waiting for you- I could use a woman like you, you know.”

“I think you already have,” Kit said, and walked away.

There was something not right, she thought as she looked around. Something off that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Or at least, she couldn't put her finger on it until she spotted Stewart Mitchum lurking far away from the other guests, adjusting something on the wall nearby. She couldn't tell what exactly it was from here, but her gut instinct told her it was nothing good. Quickly, she marched over to Olaf, who by now had joined the conga line which was making its way round the tables and chairs.

“Guv,” she said.

“What is it?” he asked. “I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“Guv, there’s a bomb here,” she said, cutting straight to the point.

“What?”

“Stewart has planted a bomb- we have to get everybody out of here now, before it goes off.” She sighed. “Please, just trust me on this.”

“Okay,” he said. “If you’re wrong about this…” he trailed off, not finishing. Then he turned to face the crowds. “Right, come on everybody, show’s over!”

“Come on, everybody, let’s move down to the end of the street!” Kit added.

“Cut the conga, quickly as you can! Back of the street, all of you, right to the back!” Olaf called.

Together, they managed to get everybody as far away from Stewart as possible. It was lucky that they had. At that moment, Stewart pressed a button, and the bomb went off- taking Stewart Mitchum with it.

Later, when Kit finally got home, she tried to take in what had happened at the party. She couldn't shake the feeling that it had been her fault for giving Stewart the idea, by mentioning suicide bombers. She wished that she could take that conversation back- perhaps if she had acted differently, then this wouldn't have happened. A part of her thought it was strange that she was letting something that she was so convinced was fictional affect her so strongly, but just then she didn’t especially care whether this place was real or not. She grabbed her tape recorder, wanting to make some kind of sense out of what had happened.

“Everything is significant, Beatrice, I just don’t know why yet,” she said. “But the more that I experience, the more clues I’ll get and the more sense things will make- and, hopefully, the sooner I’ll be back home to you.” She paused, thinking about her mother. “Maybe I can save them both- maybe that’s why I’m here. Maybe if I can do that, it’ll be my release.” She closed her eyes. “I won’t take long to fix this, Beatrice. And I promise that I won’t leave you on your own.”

She switched off the tape recorder and put it back in her drawer, and was about to go and get herself a drink when there was a knock on the door. Kit was surprised when she opened it and found her mother standing in her doorway.

“How are you?” Mother asked.

“I’m fine,” Kit replied, trying to smile. She sighed, shaking her head. “Well, no, I mean, I’m not fine. I mean, I’m a mess, actually.”

“I’m not surprised- that must have been a horrible experience,” Mother replied. “I just wanted you to know that I had no idea he was capable of doing that.”

“Well, passion and belief in a cause- he won’t be the last.” Kit stepped aside, inviting her mother into the flat. “Would you like to come in and have a drink?”

“I can’t, sorry,” she replied. “I’m going to pick my daughter up from school- Snickets take care of their own, and they certainly don’t play favourites.”

“That’s good to hear!” Kit said, smiling.

“I’ll see you again, DI Snicket,” she said. “Sorry, I mean, I’ll see you again, Kit,” she amended.

With that, she was gone, leaving Kit with yet more to process. She may not know how she felt about her mother now that she had this chance to know her as a person and not a parent, but she knew one thing- her mother had been right, Snickets did take care of their own. And she would definitely apply that sentiment to protecting and saving her parents, not just because it might trigger her return home, but because it was the right thing to do.


	9. Chapter Eight: In Which The Team Collects Gnomes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team discovers drugs being hidden in an unexpected way, and find a young woman in need of help. When Kit fails to reach her, she finds herself becoming an advocate for another vulnerable woman, namely sex worker Trixie, who she must convince the rest of the team to listen to and help before it's too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: The episode that these next few chapters are based on deals with very heavy subject matter, specifically rape, assault, murder and discrimination against sex workers. Many characters express prejudiced views against sex workers- these views do not reflect my views as the author, they merely reflect the attitudes of the time at which this story is set. 
> 
> If you need to skip this section, that is fine- a summary will be attached to each chapter, so you can get at least a general sense of what's going on.

Chapter Eight-  In Which The Team Collects Gnomes

Kit

Kit stared at her TV, though she wasn’t paying attention to what was actually on the screen. Instead, she was focused on something that she could see reflected on it.

“I know that if I turn around, you’ll vanish,” she said, not daring to look away from the reflection. “I know that.” She sighed. “I am coming back to you, Beatrice.”

Taking a deep breath, she looked around. Sure enough, there was nothing there, she was completely alone in the flat.

* * *

The next morning, Olaf did not waste any time in getting to work. Kit had barely been in the incident room for two minutes before she, Georgie and Bert were being herded back out and into the Quattro.

“Give location of area car, over!” Georgie shouted into her radio. They were tearing through the streets, in an honest-to-God car chase at half seven in the morning.

“Wapping Wall, heading East,” replied a voice, presumably belonging to one of the uniformed officers who had also been called in to deal with this situation.

“Wapping Wall, roger that,” Georgie replied. “Over and out,” she added, just as Olaf made a sharp turn left.

“Steady on, Guv, you nearly lost me breakfast then!” cried Bert, from the back seat.

“What is that?” Olaf asked, turning to look at the aforementioned breakfast.

“It's me kebab,” Bert replied.

“Looks like a bloody pasty with its arse hanging out,” Olaf grumbled, facing the road again.

Kit was about to point out that a kebab was hardly a suitable breakfast, whether it looked appetising or not, when Olaf made another sharp turn.

“Must you?” she asked, as they somehow managed to go faster than they already had been.

“Six months we've waited for a tip-off on this lot, if you think I'm gonna let them slip through the net by driving like a tart, you are mistaken,” Olaf replied.

By now, the large white van that they were pursuing had pulled up beside the river. Quickly, the people they had been after climbed out and threw open the doors. Kit watched in only mild confusion as they started throwing garden gnomes out of the van and over the wall into the river.

Georgie and Bert were the first ones out of the car, each one grabbing one of the men and apprehending them. Georgie had a bit more luck than Bert, managing to at least handcuff her guy, while Bert had his arms around his, struggling to hold him in place

“Wouldn't have had you down as the Percy Thrower types,” Olaf remarked.

“They’re for my mam, she collects them,” the man Bert had apprehended replied.

“Ah, very touching,” Olaf replied, then he picked up one of the gnomes and threw it onto the ground. It shattered, to reveal a couple of bags of cocaine. “Who’s your mother, then? Marianne Faithful?”

Kit rolled her eyes, deciding not to get involved any more than she already had to be. While Georgie and Bert passed the two criminals over to the uniformed officers who’d shown up, she stood to the side with her arms folded.

“What’s up with you today?” Olaf asked.

“You know, just because I’m stuck here, that doesn’t mean I have to pretend to like it, okay?”

“Fine, I'll leave you to it then, sulky knickers.”

“Thank you,” Kit replied.

She walked away from the group, and climbed up an iron staircase onto a platform. Below her, the river flowed, and several gnomes passed by. Kit shook her head and looked away from them. A young woman sat beside the river, and even from here Kit could see that she was shaking.

“Dupin!” she called, glancing over her shoulder. “Come here!”

“Make your mind up, woman,” Olaf grumbled, coming over to the staircase and climbing up to join her. “Hey, are you alright there, love?” he called down to the girl, once he spotted her.

* * *

They got the gnome collectors and the girl back to the station, where the two collectors were passed over to Fernald, while the girl was guided to one of the interview rooms by Bea.

“Take ‘em down the cells, Fernald,” Olaf instructed.

“I need a piss,” said the man who’d claimed he was collecting the gnomes for his mother.

“It’s ensuite,” Olaf replied.

“Actually, someone’s nicked the bucket, Guv,” Fernald said.

“Oh, if it isn’t bloody nailed down!” Olaf grumbled, walking away in the direction of the interview rooms. Kit sighed, and followed him.

“This requires a cognitive interview procedure,” she explained, as they stood outside the door.

“We’re fresh out of cognitives- what say we just talk to her?” he replied, reaching for the doorknob.

“I don’t think she’ll open up with a man present.”

“Plenty of women have opened up to me without so much as a shandy down their neck.”

“She's scared of you,” Kit said. “Can't say I blame her.” She sighed, and rested her own hand on the doorknob. “Trust me.”

Bertrand

Bert had come back from the toilet, and grabbed a couple of gnomes. They’d managed to recover a lot of them, and they were now cluttering up the station, needing to be rehabilitated.

“What’s this, Fernald?” he asked, spying the large box that was sitting on the counter the sergeant worked behind.

“It’s for the canteen,” Fernald replied. “It’s a toaster,” he added, by way of explanation.

“Good stuff!” Bert smiled, holding up one of the gnomes. “Right, let’s find this guy a _gnome_ to go to. D’you get it, skip? _Gnome_ to go to?”

“Yeah, don’t give up your day job, boss.”

Bert laughed, and headed back into the incident room, settling into the important task of rehousing the gnomes. Quite a few people had reported the little guys as missing property, so Bert started by working through those reports, phoning up the people who’d made them.

“...Yeah, he’s got a beard,” he said to one of the people in question, an old lady who apparently had quite a few other gnomes. “Yeah, and a fishing rod.” He was looking at a specific gnome, with a blue hat and green dungarees. Apparently, all her gnomes had blue hats. “It’s broken?” Bert reached out and snapped the rod a little bit, hoping nobody would notice. “Yeah, got the little fella right here, love. Come and pick him up anytime.”

Olaf

Kit had been in the interview room for all of about five minutes when she came back out, looking a bit defeated. She held the door open, allowing the young woman- a black girl in a dark grey hoody and blue jeans- to leave the room, still accompanied by Bea, who had an arm around her shoulders.

“Well?” Olaf asked, folding his arms.

“Promise me something,” she said, glancing at the girl, who was making her way down the corridor ahead of them. “Don’t gloat.

“Oh, dear- did the _cognitive approach_ not work?” he asked, using the air quotes that she’d used herself on her first day.

“Look, she’s clearly traumatised, we need to keep her here for now,” she replied.

“Got it.” Olaf looked at Bea, who was still within earshot. “Bea, check out the missing persons files.” She nodded, and walked away, bringing the girl with her.

“Her name’s Nina,” Kit explained. “She doesn’t want to go home, she wants to stay here.”

“Where’s home?” he asked, glad that Kit had at least been able to get something out of her.

“I don’t know- I couldn't get anything else out of her.”

Nina had stopped a few feet away, and was now looking around anxiously. Olaf noticed that she was scratching herself- and realised she’d been doing that on and off since they’d found her.

“Why does she keep scratching at her arms like that?”

“I don't know- it could be nerves, could be self-harming. Whatever's happened to that girl has frightened the life out of her.”

 _Well, I’d assume so, otherwise why would she choose to stay here?_ Olaf thought. He was about to say this to Kit, when Bert came down the corridor towards them.

“Wait till you hear this one, Guv- a prozzie wants to make a complaint of rape.”

“Oh, we can never just have a quiet day, can we?” Olaf grumbled. “Come on, Snicket!” he added, heading to the front desk to check over the form that would still be there. “Right. Trixie, real name Patricia Walsh. Recently promoted from the streets to escort work. Seen more beaks than Daffy Duck at a family knees-up. Raped. Who's she trying to kid?”

“They say it's difficult for rape victims to be believed,” Kit said, shaking her head. “I wonder why?”

“She gets paid for having sex,” Olaf pointed out. To his mind, it was pretty straightforward- if you were getting paid for a service, sometimes you had to put up with the odd bad customer. It was rubbish, but it was just one of those things.

“It’s not about sex, though, is it?” Kit countered. “It’s about control, and power, and revenge!”

Olaf rolled his eyes, getting a sense that Kit was not gonna let this one go. Of all the things to get a bee in your bonnet about, honestly. He sighed, and headed back to the interview room. Miss Walsh had already been placed in there.

“The interview room?” Kit asked, sounding incredulous. “Where’s the rape suite?”

“Rape suite?” Olaf asked, raising one side of his eyebrow. “What, is that with or without a mini bar?”

“No, not like a hotel suite!” Kit exclaimed, as they both made their way into the room.

Kit

Trixie Walsh was maybe a few years older than Kit, with honey blonde, curly hair in a long perm, and bright red lipstick. While Kit set everything up for the interview, she stubbed out a cigarette in the ashtray, and lit another. For once, Kit decided not to say anything- if it settled her nerves, that was her business.

“So, where did this _rape_ take place?” Olaf asked, once they had dealt with the introductions and got the interview started.

“On that big flash boat up by Tower Bridge,” Trixie replied.

“Which boat?”

“I don't know. Sky something, I think.”

“I'll get Bert onto it,” Kit said. "So, the escort agency you work for booked you with a client?” Trixie nodded.

“He took me to a party on this boat- there were load of posh sorts there, and as many champagne cocktails as you like.”

“What, so you were drunk?” Olaf asked.

 _That should be enough for it to count as rape,_ Kit thought. _In a fairer world, everyone would agree that people under the influence can’t consent, so it would have to be rape if you took advantage of someone in that condition._

“I can hold me own,” Trixie snapped.

“Do you charge extra for that, or...?” Olaf asked, and Kit could’ve slapped him for that. Instead, she ignored him

“Carry on, Trixie,” she said.

“It gets late,” Trixie continued. “I go in to this cabin, where I thought the client was, but it turns out he'd gone. Then someone comes in, switches the lights out. Puts a key in the door to lock it. I thought it was the client but it wasn't.”

“Were guests given keys to the cabins?” Kit asked.

“Not that I know of,” Trixie replied.

“So it had to be somebody who worked on the boat?”

“I guess so.”

“Trixie, can you describe the man who raped you?”

“Well, it was dark, so I didn't get a proper look at him… but he was skinny, with curly hair. Wore a suit, I think. Posh accent.”

“So we're looking for a skinny, curly-haired bloke in a suit… who was on a big boat somewhere on the river?” Olaf asked, his eyes shining a little. “Right!” he said, clapping his hands once and standing up. “We’d better crack on, then! We've got about a million suspects to interview before we knock off. DI Snicket, shall we?”

“I knew it'd be a waste of time!” Trixie said, looking between the two of them.

“Congratulations, Puss in Boots, that’s the first sensible thing you've said. Now, you drop this quicker than you drop your drawers, or I'm gonna arrest you for wasting police time.”

“It's just, you know, it's upsetting talking about it.”

“Of course it is. Just...just take your time, Trixie,” Kit said.

“I thought he was just another punter after the usual, just straight sex. He was all right at first- he said I was beautiful.”

“Blimey, it was dark!” Olaf muttered.

“ _Beautiful on the outside_ … that was it,” Trixie continued. “But then he turns weird. He starts saying, _You're all impure_. Calling me names… _filthy whore_ and stuff. Next thing, he's digging a ring in to me. It felt like a sovereign ring. That's when he raped me. And then he started to strangle me.”

“Did you struggle?” Kit asked. She made a note of what Trixie’s rapist had said- something about the wording sounded familiar, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

“No, I was too scared to. He had a knife- he slashed me with it. I thought he was going to kill me! I'm tellin' you, this bloke, whoever he is, he's gonna do it again. He's a nutter!”

“Where did he cut you, Trixie?” she asked.

“Left breast,” Trixie replied.

“Could we see?” Trixie reached for the front of her pink blouse. Kit held a hand up. “Oh, when DCI Dupin has left the room.”

“When you're done… a word,” Olaf said, getting to his feet. He didn’t look irritated any more, or like he was taking the piss- he looked the same way Kit felt, like something in Trixie’s story had rung a bell, and he wanted to go and look into it.

After Olaf had left, and Trixie had shown Kit her injury, Kit made her way out of the room, joining Olaf outside in the corridor.

“Ten centimetres, across the left breast,” she explained.

“About eight weeks ago, we found the body of a young woman, Delphine Parkes,” Olaf replied. “Black, about 5'2, in her early 20s. She'd been raped, probably. Beaten and strangled, and her breast had been slashed- her left breast.”

“Was she a sex worker?” Kit asked.

“Prozzie? No, far from it. Regular churchgoer, in the choir. Decent family life- lived at home. She had no boyfriends, nothing like that.”

“Suspects?”

“We hauled in the usual pervs and psychos, none of them had anything to do with it.”

“So, the only thing to link Delphine and Trixie are the injuries, especially the one to the breast?” Kit asked.

“Correct- although the detail about the breast was never released to the press.”

“So how would Trixie know about it?” she asked. Unless both cases had the same perpetrator, it would be impossible.

“That's what I'm wondering.”

“Well, let's pull Delphine's file,” Kit said, opening the door to the incident room.

Looking through the file was hard. There were photos not just of Delphine’s body, but of her when she had been alive. Photos of her with her choir, with her family- clearly, she had been loved by many. Kit looked at one photo in particular, showing Delphine and her mother. She closed her eyes- why did it always seem to come back to mothers and daughters?

 _But you and your daughter aren’t separated by death,_ she reminded herself. _Just by really, really bad luck._

“Are you okay?” Olaf asked, stopping beside her chair. He reached down, picking up a small white book from Delphine's belongings- her pocket Bible. “We found this on her body,” he explained, handing it to Kit.

“Why would she carry that around with her?” she asked, after flipping through the pages to find a small photograph tucked into the back. It showed a group of young people in long blue robes- Delphine's choir.

“Presumably as a keepsake- the choir was a big part of her life.” He pointed at a large, framed photo, which depicted the same group of people on the front steps of a church. “That took pride of place in her mum's house. And that was also found with the body.” He held up a necklace, handing it to Kit.

Kit examined it, realising that it was a medallion, depicting one of the saints- St. Christopher, maybe. Kit wasn’t a Christian herself- she, like her brothers, had been raised Jewish- but she did know a little bit about other religions. It had come in handy before- maybe it would come in handy now. She put the medallion back into the box, ready to discuss the case with the rest of the team now.

* * *

“I know you've all seen these before, but look again,” Kit said, handing out the crime scene photos and the photos of Delphine’s body to the team. “Is there anything in them that might connect the murder of Delphine Parkes to the injuries sustained by Trixie Walsh?”

“I wish I'd never had that kebab,” Bert muttered, taking one of the crime scene pictures.

“DI Snicket has a theory,” Olaf explained.

“The cut is on the same breast but it's different to the one on Trixie Walsh. It's deeper- which suggests that this is a disorganised crime, whereas the attack on Trixie, although violent, is more organised, more thought out. There's also a lesion on Delphine that isn't on Trixie.

“Yeah- she was wearing this St. Christopher medallion, which was ripped off her during the attack.” Olaf added, holding up the medallion in question.

“Fingerprints?” Kit asked.

“No traces,” Georgie replied.

“What were her last movements?”

“She left work as normal, had something to eat, told her mum she was going to the church, although there wasn't any choir practice.” Olaf explained.

“Did she often go to church when there was no choir practice?”

“Her mum and dad said that she'd been a few times, yeah.”

“Witnesses?”  
  
“The night she was killed, an old dear who goes to the same church saw her there alone,” Bert said, reading from a notepad on his desk. “That was an hour before the estimated time of death.”

“How long would it take her to get from the church back to her home?” Kit asked.

“Well, on foot, which she was… between 15, 20 minutes,” Olaf replied.

“So she met somebody on her way home, or went somewhere else afterwards,” Kit said. “Did she have a boyfriend?”

“We checked out all the blokes where she worked and who went to her church. Water-tight alibis, the lot of them,” Georgie replied.

“OK, so we need to re-trace her steps, see if we've missed anything.”

“Is that a dig?” Georgie asked.

“No, just a fresh pair of eyes might uncover something new.”

“Oh, it's all right lads, Nancy Drew’s gonna save the day.”

“FYI, DS Orwell-” Kit began.

“FY what?” Georgie asked.

“I think she means FBI,” Bert suggested.

“We're CID,” Georgie countered.

“I'm only interested in finding out what happened. If you want to sit there making smug comments, that's fine,” Kit snapped, then picked up her jacket and walked out of the incident room.


	10. Chapter Nine: In Which Kit Meets A Familiar Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kit and Olaf talk to Delphine Parkes' mother, and Kit makes a connection that may come in handy. They learn which boat Trixie was attacked on, and Olaf realises the situation needs to be approached with more delicacy than he's accustomed to. Kit tries to talk to Evelyn again, but instead bumps into a family friend, Rachel, who advises her to follow her instincts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: The episode that these few chapters are based on deals with very heavy subject matter, specifically rape, assault, murder and discrimination against sex workers. Many characters express prejudice against sex worker- these views do not reflect my views as the author, they merely reflect the attitudes of the time at which this story is set. 
> 
> If you need to skip this section, that is fine- a summary will be attached to each chapter, so you can get at least a general idea of what's going on.

Chapter Nine: In Which Kit Meets A Familiar Face

Olaf

Their first port of call was Delphine’s church. The place had already been gone over with a fine-toothed comb earlier in the investigation, so Olaf wasn’t exactly sure what Kit was hoping to find that hadn’t already been found. Maybe she was right, though- maybe a fresh pair of eyes would reveal something new.

They bumped into Delphine’s mother outside the church, and Olaf decided to take the opportunity to introduce her to Kit.

“Hello, Mrs Parkes,” Olaf greeted, as they came to stand in front of her.

“Have you got him yet?” Mrs Parkes asked.

“Er no, not yet,” he admitted. “But we're doing everything we can, I promise.” He gestured to Kit. “This is my colleague, DI Snicket.”

“Hello,” Kit said, holding her hand out for Mrs Delphine to shake. “We hoped that we might find you here.”

“It doesn't take away the pain, but it eases it a little,” she explained, shaking Kit’s hand. “I can still hear Delphine's voice in the choir. She had such a pure, sweet voice, like you never heard. People say I may be cracking up, but you know what? I hope I never stop hearing it.”

She held open the door to the church, inviting them in. Kit went in first, Olaf following behind. A crucifix hung outside the door, and he couldn't help shaking his head at it as he passed. _Fat lot of good you are, aren’t you?_

Kit

Once they were inside the church, Kit took a seat on one of the pews. The choir were in the middle of a practice, though admittedly Kit wasn’t really concentrating on them or what they were doing. Her head was all over the place. She kept coming back to those crime scene photos, the photo of Delphine and her mother. _Why does it always seem to come back to mothers and daughters? s_ he thought again.

She remembered her own mother, the car explosion that she was desperate to prevent. _Make sure she concentrates,_ she could remember her mother saying. _She’s easily distracted._ Except that wasn’t true any more- it couldn't be. Kit couldn't afford to be easily distracted, not when there was so much at stake.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she reached for one of the bibles that was in front of her. Kit remembered, now, where she had heard the phrase Trixie’s attacker had used. She’d worked on a case similar to this one before, one that had required her to learn a few verses of the Bible, including this one. Now, if she could just find it…

As they were walking back out of the church, Kit decided to share what she had discovered with Olaf, and bounce her current theory off him while she was at it.

“You know how Trixie said the man who raped her told her that she was _beautiful on the outside,_ but impure?” He nodded, and she continued. “Now, I may not have connected the dots right away, but I knew that I’d read that phrase somewhere before. _You're like whitewashed tombs...beautiful on the outside/ but filled on the inside/ with dead men's bones and all sorts of impurities._ Matthew, Chapter 23, verses 27-28.”

“So, what you’re saying is, he’s a religious nutter?”

“Sort of, yeah- although, on a day-to-day basis, he probably functions perfectly normally. He won't have had successful relationships with women, he's sexually dysfunctional. He tries to replace sex with Christianity, and realises that he can't.”

“Right, and you can tell all this from a Bible quote, can you?” Olaf asked, sounding sceptical. “Although, it’s lucky you knew that- I wouldn't have made that link, I’m not Christian.”

“Neither am I- I just worked on a case similar to this in the past, where the perpetrator used that same verse, among others. He cut the breasts of his victims, too- it’s symbolic, you know? It’s the nurturer, the suckler, but it's a literal attack on femininity, on all womanhood.”

“Don't you ever get brain ache?” Olaf grumbled, getting into the Quattro.

Olaf

“This man has unresolved anger,” Kit explained, as they pulled up outside the station. “He’s cleansing society of these impure women, and we have to stop him before he kills again.”

They made their way back to the incident room, where Georgie was quick to hand Olaf a file once he walked in.

“Here’s the details on that Trixie woman that you asked for,” she said.

Olaf scanned the file- Trixie was looking less and less credible the more he read, not that she had seemed like a particularly credible witness to begin with.

“Well, at least we know Delphine’s attacker existed,” he said after a minute.

“Why would Trixie lie?” Kit asked.

“Because she wants to get one over the agency that sacked her!” Olaf snapped, handing her the file so she could see for herself. “An agency girl that accuses a client of rape, now, that's going to go down about as well as a pork pie at a wedding!”

There was only one thing for it- they’d have to talk to Trixie again, to confront her with what they had uncovered and try to get some answers.

* * *

“If I'd have wanted to get my own back, I'd have just gone to work for another agency!” Trixie protested, after they presented her with the information they had uncovered.

“They said you rolled a punter,” Olaf said, handing her the file so she could have a look at it.

“He never paid the agreed fee- I just took what was mine.” She set the file down on the table, shaking her head. “Look, this has got nothing to do with why I'm here. I'm begging you to believe me. I was raped, nearly killed. The bloke who did it, he's gonna try and kill one of us again. You've got to stop him... please.”

“We will,” Kit replied.

“You know, you might be a good performer at work, but you don't cut it with me,” Olaf said, shaking his head.

“Does this look like the boat where it happened?” Kit asked, holding out a leaflet for the Sunborn boat.

“Yeah, I think so,” Trixie replied, nodding.

Olaf and Kit went back through to the incident room. Olaf wasn’t sure what they should do now- luckily, Kit already had an idea.

“We bring in all members of staff, every single one, that was on the boat the night Trixie was attacked,” she said, tapping one of the smaller filing cabinets with a pencil.

“No we don't,” Olaf replied. He’d remembered who owned this boat, and knew how much trouble they could potentially be in if they did not approach this situation as delicately as possible.

“What?”

“The boat is owned by a Mr Leonard Roseberry-Sykes, who's a bigger pain in the arse than a bad dose of piles.”

“So he's a pain in the arse,” Kit said, frowning slightly. “Why should that stop us questioning suspects?”

“Because Mr Roseberry-Sykes is a member of the funny-handshake brigade, along with our dearly beloved Commissioner of the Met,” Olaf replied, referring to the Freemason Brotherhood that had been getting far too powerful as of late. “Which means he's got the Commissioner by the bollocks, which means he's got us by the bollocks!” He paused, giving Kit a quick once over. “Well, some of us at least.”

“So what, we just do nothing?”

“We play it softly, softly.”

Kit

This was hopeless- none of them were listening to her, and this latest reveal about Trixie being fired was only adding more fuel to the fire.

“All this is just a waste of time, isn't it?” Bert commented. “I mean, we've only got the word of some tom to go on.”

“And that's what you all think, is it?” Kit asked, glaring at him. “Look, whether you believe Trixie or not, somebody cut her. Someone hurt her, and someone left her for dead. What is it going to take for you to realise that prostitutes need your protection as much as anybody else? What, another Yorkshire Ripper?!” She sighed, and grabbed her jacket. “Sod the lot of you- I'm going to do something I should have done a long time ago!”

“Put in for a transfer with any luck,” Georgie remarked, as Kit marched over to the door.

“Snicket, where are you going?” Olaf demanded, as she pulled the door open.

“Somewhere my subconscious thinks I should be!” Kit said, leaving the incident room and letting the door slam behind her.

* * *

Kit made her way first to her mother’s office building, hoping to find her there. She found the building, and sure enough, there was a brass plaque beside the door with the words _Evelyn Snicket, Solicitor_ on it. Before she could approach the door, however, someone else exited the building.

A woman came out, closing the door behind her. She had long, dark hair arranged into a neat bun, and wore a light grey blazer and pencil skirt. Kit thought she seemed somewhat familiar- then she turned around, and Kit was able to place her.

“My God,” she breathed. It was Rachel, albeit much younger than she had been the last time Kit had seen her.

“Can I help you?” Rachel asked.

“I was just looking for Evelyn,” Kit explained.

“Oh, I'm afraid she's in with a client at the moment. But maybe I can help?” She held her hand out. “My name’s Rachel, Rachel Scieszka.”

“God, you were gorgeous!” Kit said, before she could think better of it.

“Were?” Rachel asked, glancing quickly at the building, then back to Kit.

“Er... are,” she amended. “You, you won't believe how glad I am to see you.”

“thank you!” Rachel said. “Although if you could be a little more discrete about it, that’d be much appreciated.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean… I was just…” Kit trailed off, realising that she had, once again, managed to make a situation awkward. She’d forgotten, for a minute, that this was 1981, and you couldn't just go around casually call other women gorgeous without consequences, even if it was true.

“Right, well… do you think I could have my hand back?” Rachel asked. Kit blushed, letting go of the hand she was still holding.

“Yeah, sorry,” she said, managing an awkward smile.

“Anyway, what was your message, for Evelyn?”

“There wasn’t really a message, I was just… I don’t know, I was just looking for some reassurance from someone I trust. But it doesn't matter now, it's not important.”

“So what are you going to do, without that reassurance?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Kit admitted. “What do _you_ think I should do?”

“Do you think I'm the right person to ask, considering I've only known you for seconds?”

“Good point,” she replied. “But, if you did know me, what would you suggest?”

“I’d suggest that you go with your instinct,” Rachel replied. “Good luck!” she added, going back into the office building.

* * *

Kit decided the best thing to do would be to speak to other sex workers in the area, let them know that Trixie’s attacker was out there still, and warn them to be on their guard.

“Do you know a woman called Trixie Walsh?” she asked a red-haired woman in an blue dress, who nodded.

“Yeah, I do,” she replied. “Trixie’s alright, so long as you don’t get on the right side of her. She’s got a right soft spot for the lame ducks, you know- she never had any kids of her own, so she’s like a mum to a lot of the younger girls.”

“Alright,” Kit said, making a mental note to write this down in her commonplace book later. “Well, remember, if you see any dodgy punters-”

“They’re nearly all dodgy, love,” the woman pointed out.

“If they seem especially dodgy, or if any girls go missing, call me.”

Kit handed the woman her phone number, just as a familiar red car pulled up beside her. She was not especially surprised when Olaf, Georgie and Bert climbed out.

“Are you stalking me, Dupin?” she asked.

“What are you up to?” Olaf countered.

“I'm warning these girls about Trixie's attacker,” she replied. “Somebody has to.” She frowned, looking around. “Maybe I should go down to King’s Cross?”

“Why, are we not paying you enough?”

“I just want them to be safe, that’s all.”

“Forgive me if I’ve missed something here, but why are you so bothered about them?” he asked, sounding genuinely unsure.

“Does there have to be a reason?” He nodded, and just then, Kit had an idea about how she might be able to challenge their assumptions and maybe make them see how hypocritical their attitude was. “Right then, I’ll tell you. I’ll show you the skeleton in my closet.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “The private education, the years at Oxbridge, all that counted for nothing, really, because I, Kit Snicket, was once… a prostitute.”

“Bloody hell,” Bert muttered.

“There, I’ve said it- now you know. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be.”

“Christ on a bike,” Olaf muttered, shaking his head. “Are you telling me that you lied to get into the Force?” Kit gave it a moment, before replying.

“No, actually- what I just told you was a lie. I said it to show how your pre-conceptions can inform your judgements about other people...especially prostitutes.” She folded her arms. “Sorry.”

“You know, sometimes I hate you, Snicket.”

“So I'm not how you would expect a prostitute to be? If I said I'd been raped, you would believe me, but not someone like Trixie, not a woman like that.

“No, not hate,” Olaf amended. “ _Despise._ ”

“Alright, so I’m not actually a hooker. But you know something, Olaf? If I was, then you could never, ever afford me.” As she spoke, she found herself leaning in, until there was barely any space between their faces.

“You know,” he replied, taking a step back. “You might talk with a plum in your gob, love, but I would rather go with one of them than waste my money on some bitter, twisted, messed up, clenched-arsed, toffee-nosed bitch like you.”

That was when Kit slapped him in the face.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

“No, actually,” she replied, before giving him a proper punch to the face, catching his chin and knocking his head backwards. “Now I feel better.” Then she walked calmly over to the Quattro, and opened the door. “Come on then, ladies, what are you waiting for?” she asked. “Let’s get pissed!”


	11. Chapter Ten: In Which Kit Makes Bad Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team head to Lorry's, where Kit gets drunk, Olaf tries to do the right thing and Kit ends up having a poorly thought out one night stand. Meanwhile, Georgie has an accident involving a cheese toastie, and the team poke a bit of fun at her for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: The episode that these few chapters are based on deals with very heavy subject matter, specifically rape, assault, murder and discrimination against sex workers. Many characters express prejudice against sex worker- these views do not reflect my views as the author, they merely reflect the attitudes of the time at which this story is set.
> 
> If you need to skip this section, that is fine- a summary will be attached to each chapter, so you can get at least a general idea of what's going on.

Chapter Ten: In Which Kit Makes Bad Decisions

Kit

That evening, the team made their way to Lorry’s. As they entered the restaurant, Kit overheard Georgie and Bert filling Bea in on what she had missed that afternoon.

“A proper punch?” she asked, glancing over at Kit in disbelief.

“Yeah, she’s Joe Bugner in a frock,” Georgie replied. “You know, the Guv should be careful, or she’ll wrap him around her little finger.”

Kit took a seat at the bar, and she was a little surprised when Olaf sat down beside her.

“You should get help,” he said, then turned to Lorry, ordering a pint.

“Yeah, and you should get some manners,” Kit replied, after ordering herself a glass of wine. “ _Bitch?_ ”

“Well, it was hardly worth a smack in the chops, was it?”

“It could have been worse,” she pointed out. “I could have aimed far lower.” She paused, before continuing. “So, am I forgiven?”

“I'll tell you when I can feel my gob,” he muttered, rubbing his chin.

“I was right though,” she said. “Any woman who walks in to your station deserves to be treated equally- sex worker or not.

“Sex worker! You talk about them as though they're your mates,” he said, Kit just rolled her eyes. “I would've thought your sort were more the old Pimms on the lawn brigade.”

“Yeah, course they are,” she replied, shaking her head. “You can talk, by the way, Mr. Count of Manchester.”

“Yeah, well, at least I don’t act like a posh nob all the time, I just happened to have found a noble or two in the old Dupin family tree when I did a bit of poking around there in school. I don’t know any actual royals or anything like that- though I bet you’ve got a couple in your address book. I bet you’re on first name terms with them Armstrong-Joneses?”

“Sorry, no. No mates, to speak of. Not any more.” She sighed, finished off her wine and poured herself another glass. “Tell me, do you ever get lonely, Olaf?”

“Count Olaf, lonely?” he scoffed. “Too busy clearing the streets of Cockney filth and scum to get lonely.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “And if I ever hear you repeat that I will stamp on your pretty little head.”

Several glasses of wine later, and Kit was feeling more than a little bit sorry for herself.

“Why can't I just enjoy the last few seconds of life?” she asked. “It doesn't _all_ have to be all about pain, does it?”

“No,” Olaf agreed. “What doesn't?” he asked, after a beat.

“What would you do, Olaf?” Kit asked, propping her head up on one fist and leaning close to his face. “Your last few seconds on Earth, anything you want. Right now?”

“What, anything?” he asked, and she wondered if she had imagined his eyes flicking down to her lips.

“Anything,” she replied, leaning in a little closer. “Right now- say it.”

“I'm drunk,” he said, drawing back slightly. “And you're very drunk.” Finishing the last of his wine, he grabbed his coat.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m doing the right thing,” he said, standing up and shrugging his coat on. “And you, Bolly, should go to bed.”

With that, he left the restaurant. Kit was not on her own for very long, though, because almost as soon as Olaf had left, someone plonked a bottle of champagne down on the bar beside her.

“Champagne should never be drunk alone,” a man’s voice said. Kit looked up, and saw a man maybe a few years younger than her, with short, wavy blonde hair, a light blue suit jacket and actual red braces.

“Well, I couldn't agree more,” she replied, smiling up at him.

Beatrice

DI Snicket had been slow dancing with the man in the blue jacket for a while now. Bea didn’t really know where to look- seeing any superior officer acting like this would be weird, and while she probably should be used to Kit’s weird behaviour by now, this was something new, and she wasn’t really sure what to think.

“Blimey, she’ll be dropping her knickers right here the way she’s going,” Georgie remarked.

“Do you think we should say something to her?” Bea asked. The two of them were the only women who were in any way involved in the CID team besides Kit- maybe she’d listen to them.

“Let’s leave it for now,” Georgie replied. “She’s not hurting anyone at the moment.”

Kit

“You are so not my type,” Kit said, her words ever so slightly slurred.

“Really?” the man asked.

His name was Thomas, maybe, or Timothy? Something like that. Kit decided to just settle for calling him Tim in her head for now.

“Your place or mine?” Tim asked after a while. Kit thought about it for a second, before replying.

“Mine- on one condition.”

“What?”

“You let me ping your red braces.”

The rest of the night after that was something of a blur. A good blur, Kit thought, but a blur nonetheless. At some point, Tim left, and Kit ended up passing out in her bed.

She was woken the next morning by the phone ringing, which did not do wonders for her pounding headache. Groaning, she reached out for the phone, which was on her bedside table, and pressed the headset to her ear.

“Hi, Ma’am,” Bea’s voice came.

“Hi, hi, Bea,” Kit replied.

“Are you alright?”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

“Are you coming in today?”

“Yeah, yeah, no, I’m coming in.”

“Alright, see you later.”

“See you later, Bea- bye for now.” Kit hung up, and let out another groan.

She dragged herself out of bed, pulled on her blue jumper, black jeans, white jacket and boots, and grabbed a pair of sunglasses before heading to work.

When she entered the building, she saw one of the uniformed female officers attempting to guide Nina out.

“Please, I can’t, I can’t go, please don’t make me,” Nina said, repeating herself over and over.

“You’re going to have to,” the officer said. “You can’t stay here.”

“Is everything alright, Fernald?” Kit asked, stopping by the front desk to sign herself in.

“She hid all night in the Ladies, ma’am,” he replied. “We’re just trying to get her to go home.”

“Put her in the records room for now,” Kit told the female officer. “Keep an eye on her.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied, steering Nina in that direction.

“That girl’s home life must be hell, to make her want to stay here,” Fernald observed. Kit nodded, then she propped her glasses up into her hair.

“Right, Fernald, be honest- how do I look?”

“Fine!” he replied. Kit nodded again, lowering her glasses.

“Thanks,” she said. “Word of advice- don’t bother with poker,” she added, before walking over to the incident room.

Georgina

All Georgie had wanted to do was make a stupid toastie, and now she’d burnt her lip and nobody was letting her forget it.

“They’ll be mistaking you for one of the prozzies, Georgie,” Bert said.

“Piss off,” Georgie muttered, tossing a scrunched up bit of paper in his general direction. “I burnt it on a cheese and tomato toastie on that bastard Breville thing.” She shook her head. “A cup of tea’d be nice, Bea,” she added, as her younger colleague passed by.

“Bert’s just made us one,” Bea replied.

“That’s a plonk’s job!” Georgie exclaimed, staring at her friend. Why would anyone wanna be stuck making the tea? That had been her least favourite part of being an actual plonk back in the day.

“Well, I was making one anyway,” Bert said. Georgie just shook her head at him.

“God, Georgie, what’s up with your lip?” Bea asked, apparently noticing it for the first time.

“It’s not that bloody bad!” she snapped. Just then, the Guv came out of his office.

“What on Earth have you been up to, Jeanie?” he asked.

“I burnt my lip, Guv, alright? It’s just a burn!”

Kit came in at that moment, finally giving everyone something to focus on other than Georgie’s lip. She looked pretty wrecked, and she seemed to not care who knew it, judging by the sunglasses which took up half her face.

“Morning!” she said, like this were any other morning.

“Morning, ma’am,” Georgie replied, biting back a smirk. It was probably mean to take the piss out of Kit, but she did make it so easy. “Good night last night, was it, Inspector?”

“Yeah, thanks, Georgie.”

“You look a bit tired- you been up all night, have you?”

“Nearly,” she replied. “But you know what, it was _really_ worth it.”

She went to sit down at her desk, grabbing one of the gnomes that was sitting on it and dropping it onto the floor.

“All fur coat and no knickers, that one,” Georgie said, sitting down at her own desk. “She might not have been lying when she said she used to be a hooker.”

It was a low blow, but, well, if everyone was assuming that about Kit, then they might stop assuming that about her.

Kit

Once Kit had sat down, Bea came over to her desk, carrying a file.

“Here’s the staff names from The Sunborn, ma’am,” she said, passing the file over. “There’s a fancy dress party on board there tonight. I could hire you all costumes, maybe that could be your cover.”

“Yeah, great, thanks, Bea!” Kit replied.

“Can I ask you something?” Bea asked. Kit nodded. “Was it really that good? You know, what you were on about just now.”

“It was amazing,” Kit replied. She thought it had been, at any rate, she wasn’t completely sure.

At that moment, the door to Olaf’s office opened, and he gestured for Kit to come in. Kit rolled her eyes, but nonetheless she stood up and entered the office, closing the door behind her.

“How’s the hangover?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s coming along nicely,” she replied. “How’s your chin?”

“Well, at least I can feel it now.”

“There’s a party tonight, on The Sunborn- we could go as guests, and check out the staff Trixie’s rapist.”

“Look, um, don’t get all feminist on me, but tongues have been wagging,” he said. Kit rolled her eyes.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she replied.

“Yeah, well, I wouldn't want you getting a name for yourself.”

“Oh, God,” Kit said, fighting the urge to laugh out loud. “Oh, God, you really are a 1981 construct through and through, aren’t you? It’s actually amazing.”

“I am trying to help you here!” he snapped.

“Well, I don’t need your _help,_ okay? Their archaic attitude is their problem, not mine.”

“Wrong- it’s my problem too. In order to keep this department running smoothly, I need their respect, which I’ve got. They look up to me, they should be looking up to you and all.”

“What do you want me to do, morph into a nun?!” Kit exclaimed. “It’s not like I’ve shagged an entire rugby team, is it?!” She shook her head, glaring at him. “This is all your fault, anyway!”

“How is this my fault?!”

“Because you left me on my own, and I ended up with some Thatcherite wanker!”

“I told you to go to bed, alone! And if you'd listened to me, we wouldn't be wasting my time having this conversation!”

“That's right,” Kit snapped, pulling the office door open. “We are wasting time, when we should be making a plan for tonight.” She stalked out of the office and back to her desk. “Get those fancy dress costumes, Bea,” she added, taking a seat once again.


	12. Chapter Eleven: In Which The Team Goes To A Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title explains it all in this rather short update- Kit, Olaf, Georgie and Bert get dressed up and go to the boat where Trixie was attacked in order to uncover her attacker. They find the right guy, but not without getting into trouble with the boat's wealthy, influential owner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: The episode that these few chapters are based on deals with very heavy subject matter, specifically rape, assault, murder and discrimination against sex workers. Many characters express prejudice against sex worker- these views do not reflect my views as the author, they merely reflect the attitudes of the time at which this story is set.
> 
> If you need to skip this section, that is fine- a summary will be attached to each chapter, so you can get at least a general idea of what's going on.

Chapter Eleven: In Which The Team Goes To A Party

Kit

That evening, Kit, Olaf, Georgie and Bert arrived at the party, albeit in two separate pairs. Kit and Olaf arrived together- though she wasn’t sure if Georgie and Bert were here yet, or really where they were.

“You could've made an effort,” Olaf remarked, giving her a quick up and down.

The only two ladies costumes Bea had been able to get was a sexy cat and a flapper- Kit had lost the coin toss with Georgie, and gotten the sexy cat. Olaf had a Dracula costume, complete with a high-collared black cape, and he looked positively ridiculous.

“Do you really need the fake fangs?” she asked.

“Yes, because without those I’m just a twat in a cape.”

“You’re a twat in a cape regardless,” Kit countered.

“Speaking of which, where’s Bert gotten off to?”

Bert emerged from the crowd at that moment, wearing a Superman costume along with his glasses.

“Look, I’m Superman, and Clark Kent!” he said. “Pretty good, eh, Guv?”

“Don’t call me that, we’re undercover,” Olaf replied.

“Sorry, Guv.” He looked around. “Georgie should be around here somewhere, I think.”

“Right. Remember, we’re looking for a skinny, curly haired bloke wearing a sov,”

“What about that one, who’s talking to the flapper?” Kit asked, pointing to one of the waiters.

“Nah, he’s not got curly hair,” Bert pointed out.

The flapper turned then, and walked over to the three of them. Kit almost didn’t recognise Georgie for a moment- her hair was down, and the silver dress was very different from her usual clothes. The only thing that was the same was her glasses.

“This isn’t half uncomfortable,” she muttered, adjusting the dress. “That’s the third person who’s asked what I was charging- why the hell did I think this was a good idea?”

“Anyone suspicious?” Kit asked.

“No- none of them have been waiters so far,” she replied.

“Right, so, we’ll split up, see if any of these waiters fit Trixie’s description,” Olaf said.

Georgie and Bert went one way, Kit and Olaf the other, both pairs scanning the crowds for waiters that might tick all the right boxes.

“What about him?” Olaf asked, pointing to one of the waiters.

“No, he has the right hair, but he’s not skinny,” Kit replied. She pointed to another one, who was both skinny and curly-haired. “What about that one?”

“No, he’s not wearing a ring,” Olaf pointed out. Then he spotted another waiter pouring out a glass of champagne. “Snicket, sovereign ring, over there.”

“Time for a little bit of role play, I think,” Kit said, walking over to the waiter. “Hi,” she said, before whispering something vaguely suggestive in his ear. The man smiled, nodded, and gave her a wink. Kit smiled, and walked back over to Olaf. “It’s not him. Let’s keep looking.”

At that moment, Georgie caught their attention, nodding in the direction of yet another waiter. This one ticked all the boxes- skinny, curly hair, sovereign ring- and he looked familiar, like Kit had seen him a couple times before, but she wasn’t exactly sure where.

“Christ, we might actually be getting somewhere with this, Bolly,” Olaf said. “See him? He was in Delphine’s choir- we interviewed him a while back.”

“Well, let’s go talk to him, then,” Kit replied.

“Just remember, Snicket, we’re playing it softly, softly.” He nodded towards an old man in an expensive suit who had just come out of the ship’s cabin. “That’s Roseberry-Sykes- if he smells a rat, then we go, cause if we upset him, then we’re all in the shit.”

Kit was quiet for a moment, thinking something over. She had an idea of how they could possibly go about this- though it might not work. Still, it was the only thing she could think of, so it might have to do.

“I’ve got an idea,” she informed Olaf, looking at the waiter who had been in Delphine’s choir. “Maybe we can provoke some kind of reaction. Tell him that you think women like me are dirty, tell him you think that I’m like a prostitute. You’ve got no respect for women like that.” She paused for a second, considering. “In fact, Olaf, just be yourself!”

She walked over to Georgie and Bert, looking between the two a couple times before focusing on Georgie.

“Georgie, come on, I’ve got an idea.”

“What are we doing?” Georgie asked, frowning already.

“We’re going to provoke a reaction from that waiter you pointed us to. Nothing major, I promise, but we need to act fast.”

“You have got to be kidding me, Snicket. Apart from anything else, I’m pretty sure that I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“And thank goodness you’re not my mother, because that would be a nightmare,” Kit replied, holding out her hand.

They made their way further into the crowds, right in the waiter’s line of vision, and started dancing. They weren’t really doing anything suggestive- it was just about getting the suspect's attention. Hopefully, Olaf would be able to do the rest.

Olaf

While Kit and Georgie got to work provoking a reaction, Olaf made his way over to the waiter. He remembered the guy’s name, sort of- Ryan something-or-other. He was looking at Kit and Georgie with a distinct look of disgust and discomfort, and it didn’t get any less distinct when Georgie eventually wandered off to get some more champagne.

 _He’s being a right twonk- he doesn’t know anything about either of them, he’s just making assumptions based on how they’re dressed,_ Olaf thought. The irony, of course, wouldn’t quite click until after the party- right now he had work to do.

“Fancy shoving her overboard?” he asked.

“No amount of water could ever get a woman like _that_ clean,” Ryan hissed. To her credit, Trixie had been telling the truth when she’d described his accent as posh. “Our Lord has many words to describe women like _her,”_ he added.

 _Feel like you’re making an assumption or two about what we have in common when it comes to the old faith and religion, mate,_ he thought to himself.

“Impure?” he offered instead, as a suggestion.

“Very,” Ryan responded.

“She may be beautiful on the outside…” Olaf began. He couldn't be buggered remembering the rest of the quote, but hopefully Ryan would be nice enough to fill him in.

“But filled on the inside with dead men’s bones and all sorts of impurity.” Ryan finished.

There it was, a lovely little verse. And he’d thought the bloke that did his bar mitzvah back in the day was dreary. It just went to show there were people in any religious group who could really bring the mood down. Just then, Kit came over to where they were standing.

“What’s your name, sir?” she asked.

“Ryan,” Ryan replied- there, Olaf had guessed right after all. That would've been a bit awkward, to say the least.

“Your full name, sir.”

“Ryan Burns,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”

“I am arresting you for the rape and attempted murder of Trixie Walsh-” Kit began, holding up her warrant card.

The question of where she had been hiding that in an outfit that did not seem to have any pockets entered Olaf’s mind briefly, but he had to chase it out quickly, both because there was a time and a place for that sort of thinking- and frankly, if he started actually thinking about Kit’s outfit at present, it might not leave much room for anything else- and because Roseberry-Sykes had noticed them, and was making his way over.

“So much for softly, softly,” he muttered, gently but pointedly lowering Kit’s arm.

“What’s going on over here?” Roseberry-Sykes asked.

“Nothing,” Olaf replied, hoping to still salvage the situation. “This young lady was just having a little chat-”

“Mr. Roseberry-Sykes, a rape took place on your boat two nights ago- this man here is a suspect.”

“Rape?” Roseberry-Sykes asked, sounding incredulous. “There must be some mistake!”

“I’m afraid not,” Kit replied, placing an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “Now, if you’ll just come quietly, we can get this over and done with.”

Right at that moment, there was the sound of glass shattering. Olaf slapped his face hard enough that his nose actually hurt, and turned in the direction of the noise.

“For the last bloody time, I’m not charging, I’m a bloody guest!” Georgie shouted, right before she kneed one of the other guests in the balls and elbowed another one in the stomach, which normally would be pretty good self defence, but it was the last thing any of them needed right now.

“Jeanie!” Olaf yelled. “Sorry to cause this inconvenience, sir,” he told Roseberry-Sykes, in a more normal voice.

“This is unbelievable!” Roseberry-Sykes snapped.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Georgie, Bert, we’re going, right now!”

The four of them left the boat, now with Ryan Burns in tow- and the knowledge that they were going to be so far up shit creek when they got back to the station, they’d probably never find their way back- or at least, it would take some serious effort.


	13. Chapter Twelve: In Which Georgie Comes Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olaf and Kit interview Trixie's attacker- but they quickly learn that she wasn't the one that he really attacked. Meanwhile, Georgie forms an unexpected bond with Nina, the young woman they met in chapter one, and manages to get to the bottom of what's really going on. However, when Nina decides not to press charges after realising how hopeless it would be, Georgie finds another way to ensure that her attacker faces consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: The episode that these few chapters are based on deals with very heavy subject matter, specifically rape, assault, murder and discrimination against sex workers. Many characters express prejudice against sex worker- these views do not reflect my views as the author, they merely reflect the attitudes of the time at which this story is set.
> 
> If you need to skip this section, that is fine- a summary will be attached to each chapter, so you can get at least a general idea of what's going on.

Chapter Thirteen: In Which Georgie Comes Through

Kit

After the party, their first order of business was to bring Ryan to the station. The interview, however, would have to wait until the following morning, at the earliest. Olaf and Kit were to interview Ryan Burns once his solicitor arrived.

When Kit pulled open the door to the interview room, however, she was a little surprised to see that Rachel was sitting beside Ryan.

“Hello again… Inspector,” she said.

“Hello,” Kit replied, taking a seat beside Olaf.

“Recognise this woman?” he asked, presenting the file with Trixie’s photo attached.

“No, sir,” Ryan replied, looking down at the photo and shaking his head.

“She was on The Sunborn the night of the alleged rape. You were on duty... we checked,” Kit said.

“Well, I was,” Ryan replied. “But I didn't see her.”

“Unless anyone actually saw my client sexually assault the complainant, all this is completely circumstantial. Has anyone witnessed it?” Rachel asked. Kit sighed, and shook her head. “So the only witness to this alleged crime is the complainant? A prostitute?” Kit nodded.

“Have you had sex with a prostitute before, Mr Burns?” Olaf asked.

“You really don't have to answer that,” Rachel said.

“No, I wouldn't... I couldn't!” Ryan replied, sounding genuinely upset that they would even think he could do something like that.

“You were the only one that used the exact quote from the Bible that the victim says you used,” Kit countered. “You also matched the description the victim provided.”

“As far as I’m aware, quoting from the Bible doesn't make someone a rapist,” Rachel replied. “And since there were probably quite a few people on that boat with curly hair and wearing suits, it’s entirely possible this is a case of mistaken identity.”

“Shall we let Mr Burns speak for himself?” Kit asked, laying a copy of the Bible on the table. The book had a red cover, with the title picked out in gold lettering.

“Did you or did you not rape and assault Trixie Walsh?” Olaf asked.

“I swear I did not rape or assault Trixie Walsh,” Ryan said, his hand resting on the Bible in front of him. “I've never even seen her, as God is my witness.”

After that, Kit went back to her desk. She wasn’t sure what they were meant to do now, but they had to do _something,_ that much was obvious. _Someone_ had to have hurt Trixie, and she still couldn't shake the feeling that Ryan had something to do with all of this.

“Bea, find out anything you can about Ryan Burns,” she said. “Double check the statements that placed him at the park at the time of Delphine’s murder.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bea replied.

It was getting a bit easier, now, to separate this Bea from her Beatrice in her mind, and it didn’t really trip her up any more to say her name or even to think it in her head. These thoughts were interrupted by Olaf coming out of his office and clapping his hands once.

“Right, I’ve asked Georgie and Bert to keep an eye on that girl who keeps hanging around the station.”

“What, Nina? What’s she done to deserve them?”

“Have a little faith, Bolls- what’s the worst they can do?” He frowned. “Actually, you know what, best not to answer that.”

Georgina

This was not going well. Neither Georgie nor Bert had any idea what to say to Nina, who was sitting in a chair, still scratching at her hands. Georgie glanced at Bert, then nodded towards Nina, hoping that he might have some way to break the silence.

“We had a dog that used to scratch itself all the time,” he said, finally. “Distemper. That wasn’t his name, though.” He paused. “Had to be put down in the end.”

Georgie sighed, raising her eyes to the ceiling. _God, give me strength,_ she thought.

Kit

Kit sat on one of the chairs in Olaf’s office, waiting for him to get off the phone. They were definitely in trouble, she just had to wait to find out how much.

“… Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” Olaf said, before setting his receiver down. “Well, that’s us bolloxed,” he said after a minute. “Roseberry-Sykes has been on to the Commissioner, accusing us of victimising his staff. So unless we can get something that sticks, we’re gonna have to let Burns go- and right now, we’ve got sweet F.A.”

Kit sighed, and walked out of the office and the incident room. She wasn’t necessarily seeking Rachel out, but when they came across each other in the hall regardless, she decided to talk to her anyway.

“I know this won’t mean anything to you, but I just wanted to say that I honestly think that I’m right. And if I’d just had more time…”

“It’s not about time, though, it’s about patience. You didn’t have all the facts, and you couldn't present a strong enough case- but you still believe that you’re right.”

“Yes, I do,” Kit replied.

“Snap.”

“Well, one of us has got to be wrong!”

“It’s not a question of being right or wrong, it’s a question of doing the right thing. Ryan Burns should have somebody fight his corner whether he’s innocent or not.” She paused. “How’s your Latin?”

“It’s pretty rusty,” Kit replied.

“Alios tracta sicut te ipsum,” Rachel said. Kit frowned for a moment, considering.

“Treat others as yourself?” she tried.

“Not so rusty!” Rachel replied. At that moment, she pulled something out of her pocket, a Dangermouse toy.

“I remember that!” Kit said, before she could think better of it. “Those, I mean.”

“Really? Wow, they’ve only just come out. It’s for Kitty, Evelyn’s daughter. Of course, she’ll probably say she’s too old for toys.”

“I bet she loves it when you spoil her,” Kit replied.

“Well, she’s worth every penny,” Rachel said. “She’s not got it easy, but you probably know more about all that than I do, seeing as you’re family.”

“Did Evelyn tell you that?”

“Yeah- though even if she hadn't, I kind of figured it out myself, since you were a Snicket- there’s not a lot of those around, after all.”

“No,” Kit said, “No, there’s really not.”

“Well, Inspector Snicket-”

“Kit,” she corrected.

“Well, Kit, I hope we meet again, it’s been… unique.”

She walked away, and Kit smiled, watching her go. Her smile faded, though, when she turned her head to see Olaf coming over to her.

“Getting to know the enemy?” he asked.

“You know what, I’m not even sure that you and I are on the same side any more,” she replied, tucking her thumbs into the belt loops of her jeans.

“Well, let’s put that to the test, shall we? I went with your idea on Trixie Walsh's story- now you can go with mine.”

They went into the interview room, where Trixie was sitting. She wore a lilac blouse today, and looked slightly more understated than she had yesterday.

“Your alleged rapist, Ryan Burns, doesn’t even remember seeing you, never mind having sex with you,” Olaf said, taking a seat across from Trixie. Kit stayed standing in the corner for now.

“Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?” Trixie countered.

“About the only thing you got right was him wearing a ring,” he replied. “What kind did you say it was again?”

“Sovereign.”

“Sure? Like this, was it?” He drew a sovereign ring from his pocket. Trixie nodded. “How can you be sure? Cause you said that it was dark. What, have you got x-ray vision?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Trixie replied.

“D’you know what I think?” Olaf asked. “I think I’ve got x-ray vision, because I can see right through you. You’ve made this whole thing up, haven’t you? And I want to know why.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

“You weren’t raped, were you?” Kit asked.

Several things were starting to click into place- the fact that while Trixie’s injuries had technically matched up with Delphine’s, they had been far more controlled, the fact that Trixie’s description and details seemed so vague… almost like she had gotten them second hand, and was passing them along. Trixie hadn’t been raped- but someone else had, and Trixie was taking the hit for them.

“Don’t let that bastard get off, he’s sick!” Trixie protested.

“No, sweetheart, you're sick,” Olaf said, getting to his feet.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Kit asked. “This can’t all be fake, there has to be some element of truth. So what is it?”

“If I tell you, will it lead to him going down?”

“If you can prove it, then yeah, hopefully,” Olaf replied. “But if you want justice, then you need to start telling the truth, alright?”

“Alright,” Trixie replied. Then she started to talk.

Georgina

Bert had, mercifully, cleared off and gone back to his desk. Georgie offered to get Nina a cup of tea- which she wouldn't normally do, but it seemed only proper under the circumstances. She carried the two cups in, along with a plate of biscuits and the container they kept the sugar in, and set them all down on the desk.

“There we are,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted sugar, so I brought it through just to be safe.”

She pulled the other chair over, so she was sitting across from Nina. The girl didn’t say anything, she just kept fiddling with her scarf, which was at least an improvement over all the scratching. After a moment, Georgie sighed, and reached down, pulling off her boot and sock. She stuck her hand inside the sock, making a sock puppet.

“There you are!” she said, before turning the puppet to face Nina. “And who have we got here?” She held the puppet up to her ear, opening its mouth a couple times before drawing back in wide-eyed surprise. “Really?” Finally, she turned it back to face Nina, and opened and closed its mouth again while making a spitting noise. Nina didn’t say anything, but she was smiling a little. “Spit the dog!” She paused. “That was rubbish, wasn’t it?” Nina nodded, smiling a bit wider now. “You should smile more- it suits you.”

Georgie put her sock back onto her foot, pulling her boot on as well, and reached into her pocket for her cigarettes. She offered one to Nina, who shook her head.

“No thanks,” she said. “What happened to your lip?”

“I burnt it on a toastie,” Georgie explained. “Everyone keeps pulling my leg, saying I’ll end up getting mistaken for a prozzie. I mean, a lady of the night,” she amended, realising that a kid Nina’s age probably wouldn't like hearing that kind of talk.

“Like me?” she asked.

“Yeah, I like you- you seem like a nice kid,”

“No,” Nina said, shaking her head. “ _Like me."_

“What?” Georgie asked, incredulously. “You mean you’re a…” Nina nodded. “You’re having me on, a nice girl like you?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, I don’t think I do, love. Why would you want to make up something like that?”

“I’m not making it up,” Nina replied. Then she moved her scarf aside, and reached for the buttons of her blue polo shirt.

“Hang on a minute, love,” Georgie said, holding her hand up.

“If I were really such a nice girl,” Nina replied, “why would someone do this to me?”

She unbuttoned her shirt and pulled it down a little, exposing several bruises around her neck, and a deep slash across her left breast, exactly like the one that had been left on the body of Delphine Parks.

Georgie found Kit and Olaf in the interview room with Trixie. She asked Kit to step outside with her for a moment, and filled her in on everything Nina had said.

“She knew that Trixie,” she explained. “It was her who got her into the escort agency, she’d only just started.” Just then, the door opened, and Olaf came out. “It wasn’t Trixie who was raped, it was Nina. Trixie knew Nina would be too traumatised to come to us, so she faked the rape as her own.”

“We know all that,” Olaf replied. He opened the door, and Trixie stepped out. “Once Motor Mouth here had stopped shouting and started talking, the truth came out, eventually!”

“If anything happens to one of those girls, you lot won’t know what’s hit you,” Trixie said.

Kit

“I don’t get it,” Georgie said, once they were back in the incident room. “Why would Ryan Burns try and kill Nina?”

“Why would he kill Delphine?” Olaf asked. “What was his motive?” He was studying both of the choir photos. “Bea, pass me the magnifier.”

“What have you got?” Kit asked.

“A link, hopefully.” He held the magnifying glass up to the photo Nina had been carrying. “Here, look in this photograph, he’s wearing the St. Christopher.” He moved the glass over to the framed photo. “But in this one, he’s given it to Delphine.”

“They were courting,” Bert suggested.

“Everything is significant,” Kit replied.

“I don’t get why he killed her, though, ma’am,” Bea said.

“Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her,” Kit replied. “He thought he loved her- but she rejected him, which made him feel impure. He lashed out, ripped the St. Christopher off, and afterwards he felt dirty, and he needed someone to take out his self-hatred on. When he realised Nina worked for an escort agency, he had to kill her.”

“Let’s just get the twisted bastard,” Georgie said.

“He’ll go after prostitutes again,” Kit said. “The sooner he’s caught, the better.”

They took the Quattro back to the place where Kit had spoken to the sex workers the other day, and while Olaf, Georgie and Bert spoke to one group, Kit spoke to the woman in the blue dress that she’d talked to last time.

“...Yeah, he was skinny, with curly hair- he looked like butter wouldn't melt,” she said.

“Where did they go?” Kit asked.

“Up by the river there,” she replied.

“Olaf, let’s go!” Kit called back, after she’d thanked the woman for the tip.

“It was Sonya he went off with- he was driving a white Ford Escort,” the woman said. Kit nodded, and the four of them got back into the Quattro.

They tore up the road, searching for the right car. Finally, Kit spotted it in a large, abandoned warehouse.

“White Escort, in there.”

They pulled into the building, parking beside the car. There was no sign of Ryan or Sonya anywhere, the whole place was eerily quiet. The only sound came from water dripping somewhere and their own breathing and footsteps as they crept through the building.

“Georgie,” Olaf said, pointing to a ladder on one wall. “Take the stairs, quickly.”

Kit, Olaf and Bert kept searching, listening out for any sound that might indicate Ryan was here. Finally, he emerged from the shadows. He had Sonya in front of him, a knife pressed to her neck, his free hand gripping her long, dark hair.

“Ryan, let her go,” Kit said, as calmly as she could.

“No, I can’t,” Ryan said. His hands were shaking, and Kit feared he might end up hurting Sonya if they didn’t act quickly.

“Come on, Ryan, that’s not very Christian, is it?” Olaf asked.

“You don’t understand, I’m helping her!” Ryan replied. “I’m… I’m helping her to lead a good life, to be fruitful for God.”

“By raping and murdering her?” Kit asked.

“I am the vine, you are the branches,” Ryan said. “John, Chapter 15, Verse 5.”

At that moment, Georgie emerged from the shadows and grabbed Ryan, holding his arms behind his back and letting Sonya go.

“You’re nicked,” Olaf said. “For the murder of Delphine Parkes, the rape and attempted murder of Nina Akaboa. Anything you say will be taken down, ripped up and shoved down your scrawny little throat until you choke to death. Olaf Dupin, Chapter 1, verse 2!”

“Scum,” Georgie muttered, dragging him away.

Once they got back to the station, though, it became clear that they had another problem on their hands.

“Do you want the bad news or the really bad news?” Olaf asked. They were back in his office, and Kit was sitting in the same chair she’d been in earlier. “That Sonya’s legged it- which means our only chance of getting that scumbag sent down is Nina.”

“If she’ll press charges.”

Georgina

Georgie hadn’t exactly set out to become an advocate for a prozzie today, but that had been before Nina had told her what she’d been through. It had flown in the face of everything she’d assumed about the kinds of women and girls who got involved in that particular line of work- and at some point, she’d probably need to sit down and think about all this. In the meantime, though, there was work to be done.

“Do you think you can pick him out in a line-up?” Olaf asked.

They were back in the interview room, with Nina and Trixie on one side of the table, Georgie and Kit on the other, and Olaf leaning against the wall. Nina nodded.

“Will he see me?” she asked.

“I’ll come with you,” Georgie offered. “Don’t worry, love, I won’t let him intimidate you.”

“We’ll help you as much as we can, but when you’re in the court room, you’re on your own,” Olaf explained.

“Will they… bring up what I used to do?” Nina asked.

“Probably,” Kit replied.

“So, when it comes down to it, it’s just my word against his?”

“In a nutshell, love, yeah,” Olaf said.

“Will they believe me?”

"We can’t say,” Kit said.

“Well, we can,” Olaf countered. “I would love to be wrong about this, sweetheart, but… you’ve got about as much chance of convincing a jury as Michael Foot has of becoming Prime Minister.”

“Well, in that case, I don’t think I can go through with it. I don’t want it to go to court.” She looked across the table at Georgie. “Sorry.”

“Now do you understand why I wanted to do this instead of her?” Trixie asked, wrapping an arm around Nina’s shoulders.

Georgie led the two of them out of the station once the interview was finished.

“Take care, won’t you?” she told Nina, who nodded. “Look after her,” she told Trixie.

“Yeah, well, I’ll try.”

They walked away, just as Burns was also being ushered out. Georgie shook her head- something had to be done, they couldn’t just let Burns go scot-free. Good thing they still had plenty of those garden gnomes lying around…

Kit

Kit sighed- she would have loved for things to pan out differently, but deep down, she wasn’t terribly surprised that Burns was going to get away with what he’d done to Nina. Even in her own time, rape accusations often backfired on the victims, and affected them far more than the perpetrators.

When she bumped into Rachel again, she was more than willing to keep their interaction brief this time.

“Right instinct, wrong outcome,” she said.

“I’m afraid I can’t comment,” Rachel replied, and walked away.

This time, when Olaf came up to her, Kit was more or less sure that they were on the same side, or at least on the same page.

“Go on then, get it over with,” he said.

“Get what over with?”

“The lecture.”

“No lecture, you did the right thing.” He frowned, and smacked his ears.

“Sorry, is there something wrong with my hearing? I could've sworn you said _did the right thing.”_

“Well, with only 5% of rape cases ending in conviction, what chance would she have had?”

“Yeah, well, you never know- maybe it’ll change one day.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

That night at Lorry’s, Kit was sitting at the bar drinking a glass of white wine when Tim passed by her.

“My place?” he asked.

“Sorry, I’m with a friend,” Kit replied, pointing to Olaf. Tim nodded, and walked away.

Lorry passed by them, having delivered a bottle of whiskey to Georgie, Bert and Bea.

“I hope they don’t start a fire, Signor Dupin,” he grumbled.

“Nah, you’re alright, Lorry,” Olaf replied.

Kit looked over to where her three colleagues were sitting, and noticed what they were doing. Georgie dipped her finger into a small glass of the whiskey and held her lighter under it. A small blue flame appeared at the end of her finger, and she held it for a moment before dipping it into her drink to douse the flame. Bert then tried to do the same, but in his case, no flame appeared, and he jerked his finger back from his lighter.

“Mind you, you have got insurance, haven’t you?” Olaf asked.

He poured out a couple glasses of champagne, and when Kit came over to where he was sitting, he held one out for her.

“What are we supposed to be celebrating?” she asked. Olaf pointed to the TV, where a news report showed Ryan Burns being led away in handcuffs.

“In a morning raid today, police arrested 24-year-old Ryan Burns of South London for possession of ten kilos of cocaine,” the reporter explained. “The drugs were found hidden in garden gnomes in Burns’s car. If found guilty, Burns faces a prison sentence of at least five years.”

“You didn’t,” Kit said, looking at Olaf.

“Not me,” he said, looking over his shoulder to where Georgie was also watching the TV and smiling at both of them.

“Well, maybe I’ve got you all wrong, Georgie,” Kit said. “Maybe there is more to you than there appears to be.”

“Hey, Georgie!” Bert called, holding up another shot. “Quid says you can’t light your farts with one of these!"

“Make it a fiver, and you’re on!” Georgie replied, walking back over to their table.

Kit smiled, and shook her head. Maybe some things would never change- and maybe, sometimes, that wasn’t a bad thing. For the first time, Kit wondered if she would miss these people when she went home, and for the first time, that seemed like something that was entirely possible.


End file.
